Mouctar Diakhaby was the only Mallorca-Valencia player not to hold the 'Racist, out of football' banner. The Valencian central defender did not want to join the campaign of LaLiga and the RFEF devised after the racist insults received by Vinicius Jr. and the reason is that he himself suffers and nobody has been sanctioned for it. No aggressors or bleachers.

On matchday 31, in the match between Cádiz and Valencia in the Nuevo Mirandilla on April 30, the report on incidents of the LaLiga public collects that some 400 local fans of the group "Yellow Brigades" sang an insulting chant at the beginning of the clash directed at the Valencian Diakhaby and then the visiting goalkeeper, Giorgi Mamardashvili".

The hostility towards the defender stems from the complaint he made in 2021 accusing Juan Cala, then a Cádiz player, of having called him a 'black shit' during the match. Then the whole team, captained by Gabriel Paulista, left the field even before the referee activated the protocol against racism. Then, and faced with the possible retaliation of losing the three points at stake, they returned to the pitch, already without Diakhaby.

The player made a public complaint and LaLiga opened an internal investigation to clarify what happened because "something happened". "There are contradictory versions but, because of the behavior of the Valencia player, something happened. We are collecting all the images," Javier Tebas acknowledged then. The Federation, for its part, convened the Ethics Committee, which finally archived the file when it could not be accredited in a reliable way with images and sound that Cala uttered racist insults. In the word of one player against another, the cadista was believed.

That episode created a deep uneasiness in Diakhaby, who on Sunday gave his support to Vinicius Jr. "And yes, of course I support Vinicus against the racist insults he received from some fans. And I hope that my club will do what is necessary to strongly sanction those who committed these acts. To say nothing is to be complicit."

However, he saw how Cala reappeared on social networks to comment on the incident with Vinicius and call him a "clown". "Today Paulista and my friend have not left the field hurting, right? Today there are no statements, no videos, today the exemplary fans do not come out to blame, right? Time and only time puts every clown in his place," he wrote on Twitter.

  • Valencia CF
  • Racism
  • Articles Inma Lidón

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