‘My 5-year-old son asked what was going on’ – 5/22/2023 – Sports

Brazilian businessman André Zimmermann has lived for five years less than 500 meters from the Mestalla stadium, in Valencia, where, this Sunday (21), the game in which Vinicius Junior was attacked by the fans of the city team with racist insults and mime took place.

Zimmermann watched the match on TV with his 5-year-old son, but could hear the fans screaming through the window, due to the proximity of the stadium. When the game was stopped, his son asked what it was about. He didn’t know how to answer. This Monday morning, the Brazilian published a moving story on his Facebook page.

Below, his testimonial and his post:

Today that story was the talk of the town. I took my son to school in the morning and all the parents were lamenting what had happened. In the elevator here in the building, the same thing, everyone wailing. Everyone who lives here can hear the fans at the stadium. It’s normal.

What saddens me is that Valencia actually has a history of being welcoming. When I arrived in the city in 2018, there was a refugee boat that had been turned away by several cities. The community here mobilized to welcome them. Valencia is welcoming. Open, Friendly.

That’s why I wrote this story on Facebook:

I chose the city of Valencia to live and I want to stay here forever. Here we are happy, my family and I, we feel good, we feel welcomed, we like the people, the traditions, the environment.

But yesterday, during the match between Valencia and Madrid, as I listened from my house, which is next to the Mestalla, the crowd screaming “Mono, mono” for Vinicius Jr., it gave me a very bad feeling, I was sad, I didn’t want to be here.

We were watching the game on TV and my 5 year old asked me what was going on as they weren’t playing football anymore and I didn’t know what to say.

Why would they leave football aside and do this kind of thing to a person? Why every day, in every game, in different parts of Spain, they continue to insult him with racist chants and nobody does anything, not LaLiga, not his own team, not the press, not the people.

Some try to downplay what happens by saying it’s some idiots who do this. Is not true. Yesterday, from my living room, I heard the screams of many people, a large part of the crowd.

Others try to justify the attitude, saying that Vinicius provokes the fans. That’s where I get the words of Jürgen Klopp [treinador do Liverpool], who the other day, when asked about the subject, replied directly and precisely: “There is nothing that justifies racism”. Anything. And point.

I know the world is full of bad and sad things, but I have the illusion of being able to raise my son in a place where there is a minimum of respect for human beings, where racism or discrimination is not tolerated. Where those who committed it are punished in an exemplary way, whether on the street, in a company or on a football field.

And so that people who are racist are afraid to be racist and go around expressing themselves freely.