A year ago January, Udinese found themselves in the worldwide news for all the wrong reasons. Some of their fans had been racially abusing Maignan during the Udinese-Milan match, and for once, the referee, Maresca, followed the protocol. And when stopping the match was not enough, Maignan walked off the pitch and his team followed. Claiming that Friulians are not racists, Udinese made a spectacle of identifying five people who had apparently been responsible using video and facial recognition evidence, banned them for life, and made sure they were also prosecuted legally as well. Only to turn around to the FIGC and appeal the one match ban. Which, of course, since it's Italy, the FIGC gladly complied and the club went unpunished. But hate left unpunished grows, and their Curva Nord, who last year callously claimed that Maignan was the only one who heard the racist chants, have put up a banner in Udine that reads "Maignan uomo di me*da" ("Maignan man of sh*t.") At the same time, they posted on Facebook (the social media haven for racism) "Friuli, Udine, and the Curva Nord are not racist," urging dissent toward Maignan "within the canons of correctness" and also included "the Friulian people do not forget." So they are being racist without saying racist things, because their racist friends got in trouble. That is what happens when racism goes unpunished.
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| Maignan did not deserve any of this hate, least of all one year later. |
You would think that Udinese would be focused on getting revenge for the 1-0 VAR win Milan stole from them in October, but no. While Udinese's Curva Nord are claiming not to be racists (the people who insist the hardest they are not bigoted are usually the biggest bigots,) the President of the Association of Udinese Clubs basically said to ignore the "extreme." Maignan's social media post after the incident last year was perfect, though, as it reminded everyone of their complicity. He wrote:
"Today, an entire system must take responsibility:
- The perpetrators of these acts, because it is easy to act in a group, in the anonymity of a platform.
⁃ The spectators who were in the stand, who saw everything, who heard everything but who chose to remain silent, you are complicit.
⁃ The Udinese club, which only spoke of an interruption of the match, as if nothing had happened, you are complicit.
⁃ The authorities and the prosecutor, with everything that is happening, if you do nothing, YOU WILL ALSO BE COMPLICIT."
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| Winning is definitely the best response to racism |
Simply showing indifference to racial abuse is not the answer. The only way to avoid being complicit is to stand up and do something against those who are committing the hate. So even if only five people abused Mike last year, all those around them in the Curva Nord are also complicit. And for the record, there are no "canons of correctness" surrounding the "dissent" of someone who was racially abused. It is all hate, and hate has no place in football.
As for the football, Udinese come into this match eight points behind Milan, in 11th place on the table, after three straight losses. Their most recent loss was a 1-0 loss to Genoa last week. For that match, Runjaić lined up a 4-4-2 with Okoye; Ehizibue, Bijol, Folet, Kamara; Atta, Zarraga, Karlström, Ekkelenkamp; Lucca, and Bravo. Runjaić has six players out injured: Zermura, Thauvin, Keinan Davis, Sanchez, Sava, and Isaak Touré. He also has six players in danger of suspension for their next match, so will also have to manage the yellow cards in this match as well.
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| German manager Runjaić has done well with Udinese this season, despite so many injuries |
Conceição lost two players to injury this week. Santi Gimenez, who was injured in the Fiorentina match last Saturday, still has not fully recovered. Walker fractured his elbow in training this week and had to have surgery, so will actually miss a number of matches now. And Loftus-Cheek is still recovering from his emergency surgery, while Emerson Royal is working his way back after his injury as well. After some creative refereeing recently, Theo Hernández, Rafa Leão, and Bondo are all one card away from suspension. There was some discussion about Conceição potentially playing a three man back line, but he rarely discloses tactics or lineups ahead of matchups.
There is a different level of hate that has been aimed at Conceição from the toxic Italian media of late, and I am not entirely sure that it does not also have racial undertones, it has become so incredibly hateful. Plenty of people are lumping he and Fonseca together and specifically mentioning their nationality, while others just seem to hate Conceição. Whether it is just displaced anger because of the poor results, a poor understanding of how football works, or because he takes zero crap from journalists and does not feed them juicy drama 24/7 like Fonseca did, it is far more harmful to Milan than anything Conceição has done.
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| Journalists are slandering Conceição for not having instilled his football despite having no time to do so. |
I somehow still need to point out that this past week was only Conceição's third full week of training with the full team. He came in midseason and has managed 22 matches in just three months, and there was an international break in there as well. One pundit claimed "Certainly, Conceição hasn't changed Milan one iota, that's clear." Firstly, I would remind this person, who clearly has no right to be paid to talk about football, of the calendar above. Secondly, I would share this list with him of things that have very much changed thanks to Conceição:
• the lowest injury rate of any Milan manager in years
• immediately fixed a broken dressing room
• re-instilled discipline (perhaps at a higher level than we’ve seen in my memory)
• the players do not mentally “wilt” anymore, they play with fire to the final whistle
• in 5 of 6 of the last games, his subs scored/assisted
• he is undefeated in 3 derbies, the first manager since Allegri to do this
• and oh yeah, he won a trophy
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| When criticism is unfair and even becomes hatred, it's time for the media to self-examine. |
Sure, we would have all hoped the results would be better by now. But for that magical wish, you need to direct your pleas to the management, who, after making all the wrong decisions last summer in regards to both the manager and in the transfer market, destabilized the team further by overcompensating in January. That pundit wonders why Milan are leaking goals? Perhaps he remembers our midfielders like Kessié, Tonali, and Bennacer, all gone since RedBird bought the club. Now we have only attacking midfielders. That is a big reason why we leak goals. It has nothing to do with where our manager is from.
In the prematch press conference on Thursday, Conceição was asked about the racism issue with Maignan last year, and he tried to play it down and return the focus to football. But the club has been embarrassing with how they dealt with it. Last year, with the world was focused on it, they had a big spectacle of solidarity, even stopping the next match, Milan-Bologna, in the 16th minute to honor him (as his number is 16.)
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| Mike Maignan's statement about last year's win over Udinese. |
And they created their #StandUpToAllHate campaign, that still appears on the ad boards at San Siro at every match now, and which still mocks anyone who is not a white cis male, because it does absolutely nothing to stop abuse. However, when Maignan was abused again this past December by Verona fans, the club could barely manage to squeeze out a tiny little tweet that condemned racism. Absolutely nothing happened. Way to support your player. And people wonder why racism continues to thrive in Italy.
I echo Conceição in that I really hope the team is switched on from the first minute to the final whistle. But also like him, I desperately hope that the racism in the stadium will not happen again (except it has already started up again before the people even came to the stadium.) And also that Mike can focus well and have another MVP match. The self-proclaimed innocence and the ignorance of the Udinese fans about hate and racism because they don't want to ruin their image, while completely harming one man's image simply for existing is disconcerting. But it is also what happens when racism goes unpunished.
This post inspired by the music of Dionne Warwick's "What the World Needs Now"
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Campionato Primavera 1 Week 33
Reviewed by Elaine
on
5:58 AM
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