The day after the racist insults and monkey cries of which he was the victim during an Italian Championship match on Saturday evening, the goalkeeper of AC Milan and the French team Mike Maignan calls “a whole system to take responsibility”, in the face of a repeating phenomenon.
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In twenty-four hours, Maignan has perhaps made more of a mark on the history of calcio than in two and a half seasons of decisive saves for AC Milan, his club since 2021.
The Blues goalkeeper, the target of monkey cries on Saturday January 20 in the Udinese stadium, left the field, a strong gesture which forced the referee to temporarily suspend the match.
The next day, the Guyanese placed Italian football before its responsibilities: “if you do nothing, YOU WILL ALSO BE COMPLICATED”, he wrote in a message renamed Monday by the daily Il Messaggero, in French on the front page of his Sports notebook, “Maignan, j’accuse”.
While the courts try to identify the perpetrators of these racist insults based on internal stadium videos, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) finds itself on the front line.
“Our regulations defined in 2019 worked, no one looked away (…) The interruption of a match is a very strong message”, insisted on Rai Uno its president, Gabriele Gravina, in reference to the Article 62 of its “rules of internal organization”.
Public order issue
It was adopted after the Senegalese Kalidou Koulibaly, then a Naples player, targeted by racist insults in December 2018, was excluded for having ironically applauded the referee who had not interrupted the match.
“Our regulations in this area are the most severe in Europe,” says the FIGC.
Article 62 thus provides for the definitive stopping of a match in the event of a recurrence of racist insults; which has never happened before.
“The definitive stopping of a match with thousands of spectators in a stadium is a question of public order, it is not up to us to decide,” defended the boss of the FIGC.
Saturday in Udine, the match resumed after a five-minute interruption. “We told the captain and the coach of AC Milan that everything had been done to guarantee Maignan maximum protection,” referee Fabio Moresca explained to Le Messaggero.
At the end of the match ultimately won 3-2 by AC Milan, Maignan was interviewed in an office at the Bluenergy Stadium in Udine, for 40 minutes, by FIGC security representatives.
They then sent their report to the disciplinary committee which will announce on Tuesday the possible sanction targeting Udinese.
And this sanction is likely to destabilize Maignan: according to article 28 of the FIGC code, a club is responsible for the behavior of its supporters if their cries, insults or discriminatory behavior are widely heard or broadcast.
However, they were not heard during the television broadcast, nor by other players. They would be the work of “around twenty people in a stand of 4,600 spectators”, specifies a source with knowledge of the procedure.
“A certain déjà vu”
Even if Article 8 provides for the closure of the stand concerned for one match or more, the suspension of the stadium or even the exclusion of the club from the championship, Udinese could get away with a simple fine.
And when clubs are punished with the closure of stands for a match, like Lazio in early January for monkey cries targeting Roma striker Romelu Lukaku, they systematically file an appeal.
“We have to work on the people who come to the stadium to let certain impulses explode,” argues Umberto Calcagno, the president of the Italian Players Association (AIC).
According to this body, half of the insults aimed at players are of a racist nature.
In 2023, 2,956 stadium bans – for discriminatory behavior and acts of violence – were issued, compared to 1,865 in 2022.
“After the covid pandemic, it’s as if we have returned to bad habits,” sociologist Nicola Ferrigni explains to AFP.
“It’s as if the authorities had relaxed a little, after having succeeded (before the pandemic) in bringing families back to the stadium.”
According to him, Italian football is particularly behind in terms of supervising ultras: “The development of ‘Supporter Liaison Officers’ who act as a bridge between clubs and supporters is very timid in Italy compared to what is done elsewhere in Europe”.
With AFP
