RAHEEM STERLING HAS taken to Instagram to voice his support for Juventus’ Moise Kean after the striker was racially abused in the club’s 2-0 win over Cagliari on Tuesday evening.
And the Manchester City star has called out Leonardo Bonucci for partially blaming the 19-year-old.
Kean celebrated in front of the home fans after scoring in the 85th minute of the visitors’ victory, prompting the Cagliari captain to attempt to calm the crowd as they directed racial slurs at the young attacker.
Kean’s team-mate Blaise Matuidi was left furious by the incident, while Bonucci might regret his post-match comments after saying the blame was ’50-50′, asserting Kean should not have provoked the crowd and that they should not have reacted in the way they did.
Sterling, who is no stranger to abuse himself, posted on social media following the Juve centre-back’s comments, stating that ‘all you can do now is laugh’, pointing to a gross lack of understanding from the Italy international.
Other messages of support for Kean have poured in from fans and fellow players, including Paul Pogba, while another of Juve’s centre-backs, Giorgio Chiellini, has disagreed entirely with his defensive partner’s assessment of the situation.
“The only thing I was to say is that Moise is a legacy of Italian football,” the Bianconeri captain told JTV. “He’s a golden boy who is doing his best, so you can’t pretend he is something else.
“I looked at the footage after the game because from the pitch you can’t always see what happened — and he did nothing.
When all is said and done we need to think of Moise the same way we think of [Nicolo] Zaniolo, [Federico] Chiesa and [Nicolo] Barella, a positive figure for Italian football, because he deserves it.
“The only thing he did wrong today was the simulation in the first half and he certainly won’t do that again. He’s here to learn, he’s 18 [sic] and he’s a really positive guy. He didn’t deserve the insults he received.”
Meanwhile, Kean’s agent Mino Raiola, who is also Matuidi’s representative, voiced his own support for his clients, calling out racists as a disgrace who shouldn’t be counted amongst the Italian population.
“You can’t be Italian and racist at the same time,” Raiola told AFP. “I’m with Kean and Matuidi. For me, racism is synonymous with ignorance. No one can or should justify it. I’m proud of my lads and I’m with them all the way.”
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