Racism: Juve just don’t get it. Allegri and Bonucci blame Kean for monkey chanting

April 4 – Twenty-four hours after UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin lambasted the resurgence of racist attitudes  across European football, one of the Continent’s most high-profile club managers has put himself unwittingly in the spotlight with unfortunate comments that did little to support Ceferin’s powerful stance.

Juventus’ recent 2-0 win at Cagliari was marked by constant monkey chants being directed at Moise Kean and two other teammates.

Kean’s response after coming off the bench to score Juve’s second goal was to stand in front of the home fans, arms outstretched, in response to the chants. He later took to Instagram to say his actions were “the best way to respond to racism”.

Afterwards veteran team-mate Leonardo Bonucci said, in a television interview, that Kean, born in Italy to Ivorian parents, “could have done it [celebrated] differently” so “the blame is 50-50″.

He later apologised saying he was interviewed right at the end of the game and that “I was too hasty in the way I expressed my thoughts.”

But of far more concern were the words of Juve manager Massimiliano Allegri who felt that his teenage striker should not have responded to the racist chants.

Even though he called for the “idiots” involved to be handed lifetime bans, Allegri remarked: “He (Kean) shouldn’t have celebrated in that manner. You need great intelligence to deal with these situations and should not go to provoke people. He is a young man and he has to learn, but certain things from the crowd also shouldn’t be heard.”

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