Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling on Thursday slammed a renowned Italian sports daily as “dumb” and “insensitive” after it used “Black Friday” in a front-page headline about them meeting for the first time in Serie A.
Former Manchester United teammates Smalling and Lukaku were to face off on Friday at the San Siro as Inter looked to maintain its top spot in Serie A, prompting the Rome-based Corriere dello Sport to publish a headline that has attracted widespread condemnation.
“Instead of focusing on a battle between two teams ... Corriere dello Sport comes up with the dumbest of headlines I have ever seen in my career,” Lukaku said in a message on Twitter. “You guys keep fuelling the negativity and the racism issue.”
Photo: AP
Lukaku and Smalling have both taken Serie A by storm since arriving in the summer, with the Belgian striker bagging 10 goals in 14 appearances for title hopefuls Inter and England international Smalling becoming an instant fan favorite in the Italian capital.
“It is important that I acknowledge that what occurred this morning was wrong and highly insensitive,” Smalling wrote on Twitter. “I hope the editors involved in running this headline take responsibility and understand the power they possess through words, and the impact those words have.”
Both AS Roma and AC Milan on Thursday evening announced that they would be banning the Corriere dello Sport until the end of this year over the headline.
“Our players will not carry out any media activities with the newspaper during this period,” the two clubs said in a joint statement.
They added that the ban was short because “the actual newspaper article associated with the ‘Black Friday’ headline did portray an anti-racist message.”
The article praised the two players for taking “strong positions against racism and are the symbols of the two clubs,” but Roma tweeted “not a single soul” would think the headline a good idea.
“The intention of the newspaper article was actually positive, but this headline has totally overshadowed the anti-racist message contained within the story,” Roma chief strategy officer Paul Rogers said.
The Corriere dello Sport was unrepentant, saying that the headline was “only the praise of difference, the pride of difference, the magnificent wealth of difference.”
“White, black, yellow — denying difference is the typical macroscopic stumbling block of anti-racism racism,” it said in an editorial. “An innocent headline ... is transformed into poison by those who have poison inside.”
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