Uruguayan forward Edinson Cavani, from Manchester United, apologized this Monday for writing a message on his social networks that the English Football Federation (FA) is going to investigate to determine if it is a racist comment.
The Uruguayan, coming off the bench, scored two goals in the comeback that his team, Manchester United, led against Southampton in a Premier game played this Sunday (3-2).
After the crash, Cavani, 33, received congratulatory messages on his Instagram account and thanked one of them with a phrase written in Spanish that included the word “negrito”.
“The message that I posted after Sunday's game was an affectionate greeting addressed to a friend, thanking him for his congratulations after the match,” the striker explained in a statement today.
Cavani stressed that he is “totally against racism” and that the message has been removed, since his club has explained the situation to him.
“The last thing I want is to offend anyone … I want to sincerely apologize for all this,” added the footballer, who arrived this season at Old Trafford from Paris Saint-Germain.
Manchester United, for their part, explained that this term was used in an affective way and that, in addition, it has different connotations in South America, although it has stressed that it has communicated to the player that in the United Kingdom it can be offensive, which is why the message has been deleted.
As a precedent, there are the cases of the Portuguese from Manchester City Bernardo Silva and the Englishman from Tottenham Dele Alli, who received a sanction match for making comments that violated the regulations designed by the FA to fight racism and discrimination.
The Federation has revised these regulations for this new season, and now punishes with a minimum of three games whoever is guilty of behaving in a discriminatory manner.
Although the FA has not yet officially confirmed it, the association against racism in football “Kick It Out” assured today that the Federation has already started its investigations and that both Manchester United and Cavani are cooperating in this process.
“As we have said previously, we believe it would be helpful for foreign players coming to England to be educated about language that may be unacceptable in this country,” he said in a “Kick It Out” statement.
Dele Alli was sanctioned with a suspension match and a 50,000-pound fine last June, later for mocking the coronavirus and an Asian person at an airport in an Instagram post.
Bernardo Silva also missed a meeting last September because of the tweet in which he compared his partner Benjamin Mendy to a ‘conguito’ (the brand of chocolate-coated peanuts), which caused him to be branded a racist.