Inter on Friday launched an anti-racism campaign with a video in which former players Luis Figo, Javier Zanetti and Samuel Eto’o urged fans not to make the so-called “buu” noise widely regarded as a racist insult.
The video was released as Inter prepared to play a second match without spectators after some fans made racial insults and animal noises at SSC Napoli’s Senegalese defender Kalidou Koulibaly during a Serie A match at San Siro on Boxing Day.
The noise that is described by local media as “buu” is usually regarded as racist in Italian soccer, although some fans have argued it is simply to annoy opposing players regardless of race.
Inter said on their Web site that their idea was to use BUU as an acronym for Brothers Universally United — a phrase repeated by Figo, Zanetti and Eto’o in the video — and asking fans to “write it, not say it.”
The club described the campaign as “an invitation to fight racism with its own weapon: the racist buu.”
“It’s a changeover from negative to positive. This is what we want from the BUU campaign: Write it, don’t say it,” said club president Steven Zhang, who also appears in the video.
“This campaign wants to be a solid tool against all forms of discrimination and one that strongly reaffirms the values that Inter have identified themselves with for almost 111 years,” Zhang added.
Although yesterday’s match against US Sassuolo is officially behind closed doors, Inter on Thursday said that Serie A had agreed to allow 10,000 children from the Milan area to watch the game.
Inter were ordered to close their stadium to the public for two games and the section of the ground occupied by hardcore ultras for a third match following the incidents against Napoli.
Koulibaly, sent off during the match, was banned for two matches, but has appealed against the second game.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier