For Javier Solis, Valencia's spokesman, the answer was no, of course. You can't signal relegation to fans of an entire stadium. In his official statement after the match, he said it as an absolute rule that is self-contained and irrelevant to context and premises:

"As for what happened with Vinicius, you can't signal relegation to the fans of a whole stadium!" (1)

That phrase was the end of his answer to a question, and Solis did not feel the need for explanation, justification, or comment, as if he had finished repeating Newton's law of motion, for example, a fortified physical cosmic fact that alone was sufficient to end the debate and controversy.

The trick of axioms

From the overabundance of the phrase, it never occurred to any of the journalists present to ask him why. Of course, we all know why a player cannot signal relegation to fans of an entire stadium, and there is no child who has watched a single football match who does not know it. Why can't Vinicius Jr. signal relegation to fans of an entire stadium? These are axioms that do not need explanation or clarification.

The problem is that this is exactly the problem of axioms; they, being axioms, are rarely explained. Have you ever seen the door of a house open outside? Probably not. Do you know why? Not necessarily, but you're sure there's a logical reason why all doors open inward. Have you ever seen a player signal an entire stadium audience with an aggressive signal? Sure, dozens of times, and some carried sexual innuendo as well. Do you know why Solis says this is not possible?

This is an interrogative question, not a denunciation: why can't Vinicius signal relegation to fans of an entire stadium? Is it because it is Valencia's stadium and the speaker is a representative of the same club? Is it because they are many and Vinicius is only one man?

We stand with @vinijr. pic.twitter.com/vbgVkwK7Us

— Nike (@Nike) May 23, 2023

The answer is simple, because all those who did it, or at least most of them, were immediately punished by the competent authorities. When Solis said that Vinicius could not signal relegation to fans of an entire stadium, he was based on a long history of precedents for those who did it and received proper punishment. At some point, the majority decided that this act was unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances and considerations, and therefore became punishable.

If provocative, hostile or sexual references to the public are rejected regardless of circumstances and considerations, and therefore require decisive and immediate punishment, does the same rule apply to racist signs and chants as well? Logic shakes its head in the affirmative, so why didn't Solis say that an entire stadium audience can't liken a human to a monkey or wish him dead? (2)

🙏🏾🖤 RAPHINHA 🙏🏾🖤 pic.twitter.com/5M4cBU4Rjd

— Vini Jr. (@vinijr) May 23, 2023

Again, the answer is very simple, because it's a whole stadium audience. There are no other explanations here, all the old arguments about the difficulty of distinguishing faces in a crowd, the difficulty of distinguishing chants in the bustle, or whether they are isolated individual incidents or a repetitive group pattern, no longer apply. Hours after Solis' statement, Spanish police had been able to identify some faces and had already begun their investigation. (3) (4)

If all racists were punished immediately with the same decisiveness and speed, Ancelotti would not have needed intuitive phrases to convince the world that tens of thousands of thousands of racist insults and chants were enough to stop the match, and perhaps he would not have needed to talk about it in the press conference in the first place, and things would have gone on their normal course and everyone was sure that the perpetrators would get legal punishment.

Football and the hypocrisy of the fans

Why don't perpetrators get their legal punishment? This is another obvious question that we do not know the answer to: if we get out of the Vinicius incident into the general context, we will discover that football, through its men and officials, is still determined to retain its tradition rooted in the hypocrisy of the masses. Many of them do not mind collecting fabulous prices for tickets and broadcast subscriptions, or appointing their friends and trusts to sensitive positions, or depriving the manager of his powers, or seeking personal glory at the expense of the interest of the club, and in return for all that, chanting flashy slogans that do not make sense in such situations, slogans that usually protect the public from the evil of his actions. (5)

That's why it's hypocrisy. Solis did not say what he said because he sincerely believes that his team's fans cannot chant racist chants against the opposing players, but because he simply fears their reaction, or perhaps because he believes that he cannot change reality, and over time, unconsciously, the inability to change reality turns into an implicit desire to perpetuate it.

Some researchers in psychology call this phenomenon "The Missing Stair", which refers to the collective dysfunction that a society suffers from, but cannot change for one reason or another, such as the habit of throwing garbage in the streets, or random construction without a permit, or other phenomena that often carry deeper causes that are difficult to dismantle. (6)

Some believe that the residents of the houses themselves should fix it, so the residents of the houses say that the residents of the higher floors use it as well, so they must participate, and in the end, they do not agree and the situation remains as it is.

After a while, a new occupant of the building comes, and he wonders the expected obvious question about the broken degree, and they tell him what happened, then another comes, and so on, and after a while, that degree turns into an agreed reality, and because it is agreed, the residents get angry when any new occupant tries to change it, and even attack him fiercely because he is unable to accept the defect they are used to.

This is the first obstacle to putting a real end to all these facts, whether with Vinicius or otherwise; habituation, the stable imbalance that has carved its place in society's consciousness is gradually immeasurably more dangerous than the near sudden threat, because then you will not only fight this imbalance, but also the dozens of arguments and graduations that society itself has produced over the years to justify it.

Chaos Zone

A cada rodada fora de casa uma surpresa desagradável. E foram muitas nessa temporada. Desejos de morte, boneco enforcado, muitos gritos criminosos... Tudo registrado.

Mas o discurso sempre cai em "casos isolados", "um torcedor". Não, não são casos isolados. São episódios... pic.twitter.com/aSCMrt0CR8

— Vini Jr. (@vinijr) May 22, 2023

Let's go back in time to the Sterling incident at Stamford Bridge a few years ago; within hours, the police had identified the perpetrators and banned them from the stadium for good. Is it over? Of course not, but the quick response nipped much of the nonsense in the bud, and the explanations and justifications that would have been given later led to everyone going on with their lives without having to face the broken degree. (7) (8) (9)

This moved the whole situation to a higher degree, and when Stirling wrote on his Instagram account, he was not discussing the number of perpetrators, or the possibility of recognizable them, or how many times similar incidents were repeated, or other self-evident questions that Vinicius spent days searching for answers, but the whole conversation moved to a higher degree, about the underlying causes of racism so widespread, and racist journalistic treatments of news, which promote racist societal patterns in turn without uttering a single racist word. (10) (11) (12)

Spain, it seems, is still stuck in the primitive early stages; there are thousands who cheered the death of an opponent's player, calling him a monkey, and bringing monkey movements in front of him, and yet, press conferences were spent in justification, and a man stood in front of us who denied reality, carrying the public's stick behind his back, as if blackmailing victims or provoking them until they fell into the taboo.

In football, what is forbidden is to contest the public. The audience is always right and the game is there for him. Well, what if the audience is really racist? Will it be the first incident in history? Weren't there tens of millions of people who believed that blacks deserved inferior treatment until fifty and sixty years ago? Why not tens of thousands of racists gather in Mestalla, Camp Nou, Wanda Metropolitano or Cerámica? (13) (14) (15)

Logically, nothing, and logically, nothing prevents them from being punished or labeled racists if they were. In fact, Solis' main argument at the press conference was very fragile and fragile, as it is hard to imagine that a man like Ancelotti, who spent four full years in Madrid, who, throughout his career spanning the seventies, dealt with dozens of Spaniards, stood on the line during hundreds of matches in Spanish stadiums, heard thousands of racist and other chants, walked the streets, ate in restaurants, heated the debate, sold and bought, drove his car, and made dozens of friends, could not distinguish between the words "monkey" and "stupid." In Spanish. Was it really just a "translation error"? Originally when did you see tens of thousands of supporters in any stadium in the world chanting "stupid"?

All this controversy and debate would not have happened if racism had been treated as a real crime in Spain, because, as the young winger said, it is not the first, nor the second nor the third, and each time, the perpetrators went unpunished for various reasons, which are also very fragile and fragile. The solution is simple; everyone, in Spain and abroad, should treat racism as a crime worthy of just, decisive and swift punishment, and until that happens, Vinicius or others may not help but signal to the racists the relegation of their team. At least this was a realizable possibility at that moment, contrary to any Vinicius analogies to monkeys.

________________________________________________________

Sources:

  • 1- Valencia spokesman: "Ancelotti was wrong to call Valencia fans racists" – Sportskeeda
  • 2. Real Madrid winger Vinicius Jr. constantly subjected to racism during LaLiga matches – CNN
  • 3. Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr. says racism has become a "normal practice" in La Liga – Washington Post
  • 4. Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr. says racism has become 'normal in LaLiga' – Sky
  • 5 - Vinicius Jr. is constantly subjected to racism in LaLiga matches. Why is no one punished? – CNN
  • 6- The Missing Degree – The Pervocracy
  • 7. John Barnes article: If every racist in football were silenced, stadiums would still be full of racists – The Guardian
  • 8- Raheem Sterling issues statement regarding racist insults at Stamford Bridge-Express
  • 9. "The 25-year-old Manchester City player, who earns £2,25 a week, spends lavishly on a £<>.<>m house even though he hasn't started a single Premier League game" – Daily Mail
  • 10- "Manchester City young star Phil Foden buys a house worth two million pounds for his mother" – Daily Mail
  • 11 - Raheem Sterling subjected to shocking racist blackmail from Chelsea fan at Stamford Bridge – Daily Mail
  • 12. The luxury house Sterling bought after returning from the Euro turned out to be "for his mother" – Sun
  • 13- The 10 most famous cases of racism in football – Al Jazeera
  • 14- Marcus Rashford sues an Egyptian from Sharqia. Are we responsible for what we say on social media platforms? – Island
  • 15- Ignoring may not be the solution. How do we deal with trolls? – Island