BEVERLY HILLS, February 07, (THEWILL) – Serie A AC Milan’s striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic is expected to escape a racism charge over his clash with Inter Milan’s Romelu Lukaku in last month’s Milan Derby.
As reported by THEWILL, in their Coppa Italia quarter-final, the veteran Swede and the clinical Belgian got involved in a heated exchange and needed to be kept apart by teammates to avoid a violent escalation. Ibrahimovic appeared to be caught calling Lukaku a “donkey” and telling him to go do “some voodoo s**t” in the course of the exchange.
Due to the similarity of his words with some racist tropes, online commentary of the altercation quickly pointed to racism. These racist accusations were quickly rebuffed by Ibrahimovic who apologised post-match.
In an investigation opened to look into the incident and determine whether either player deserved to be punished for the incident beyond the yellow cards they were both issued by the centre referee, Ibrahimovic’s case was heard on Saturday.
According to numerous Italian reports monitored by THEWILL, Ibrahimovic will likely be let off the hook as prosecutors who heard the case were satisfied that the words of the 39-year-old were not racist and were simply just standard “trash talk” only.
As Ibrahimovic said in his defense, the “voodoo” he mentioned was a reference to the media coverage of Lukaku’s clash with Everton owner Farhad Moshiri, as THEWILL noted. The January 2019 incident had Moshiri alleging that Lukaku opted to leave the Toffees because of a voodoo message. The Swede argued that his comments were simply based on a news story and not related to Lukaku’s African heritage.
He used the same media reference to defend his use of the term “donkey” against the Belgian. English football fans are known to use that word to describe a player with no technical ability and this a claim regularly thrown at Lukaku towards the end of his time with Manchester United especially by the media.
The authorities in Italy were confident that there was no case of racism in the confrontation but wanted to remove all doubts that may exist in the league and in the minds of football fans everywhere by opening an investigation which also points to how seriously they consider accusations of racism in Italy. Also worthy of note is the fact that Lukaku has not accused Ibrahimovic of racism.
It will be the former’s turn next to get an interview with investigators, who will be getting his side of the story and questioning him over his involvement in the clash, but it seems as though this one will be brushed under the rug in the near future. The yellow cards each player got for their behaviour during the match, led up to one-game suspensions for both.
Lukaku has served his ban as he was absent from the first leg of Inter’s Coppa Italia semi-final loss to Juventus, which may have ended differently of he played. Ibrahimovic, whose Milan team was knocked out, will serve his suspension next season upon the resumption of hostilities in the Coppa competition.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
