Uruguayan Football Players Association (AFU) issued a statement on Monday expressing its rejection of the sanction that the English Football Association (Football Association) imposed on Edinson Cavani, the Manchester United striker, for using the expression “thank you, black boy” to a friend on his account . Instagram.
The AFU text states that the measure is arbitrary and “a discriminatory act against the culture and way of life of Uruguayans”. “The sanction reveals a biased, dogmatic and ethnocentric view, which admits no more than the reading to be imposed from its particular and exclusive subjective interpretation, no matter how wrong it may be,” the text adds.
They also point out that Cavani did not commit any act that could be interpreted as racist and that he used only a common expression in the Uruguayan lexicon to refer affectionately to a loved one. “To claim that the only valid form of interpretation in life is that of the leaders of the English Football Federation is in itself a real discriminatory act, totally reprehensible, against Uruguayan culture,” they said.
AFU said it was trying to “publicly defend the flawless figure of Edinson Cavani and, of course, the culture of our country.” According to footballers, the FA expresses through its sanction “a total ignorance and contempt for a multicultural view of the world, respectful of plurality, making mistakes in the unilateral and rigid application of its anti-racist rules, whose basis we support, but which all lights do not shall apply rationally to the case in question ”.
The text concludes by asking the FA to review its decision-making processes on these issues and to lift the sanction imposed on Edinson Cavani “and to restore to the world his good name and honor, unjustly crushed by this reprehensible decision.”
The statement was shared on their social networks by the footballers who make up the Uruguayan team and by some former Celesta players.