AS Roma and AC Milan ban Corriere dello Sport until January after 'Black Friday' headline controversy

Lukaku and Smalling have both condemned Corriere dello Sport's headline
Corriere dello Sport
Tom Doyle5 December 2019

AS Roma and AC Milan have issued an immediate ban to Corriere dello Sport following the Italian newspaper's controversial front-page headline in Thursday's edition of the newspaper.

The paper ran the headline 'Black Friday' alongside pictures of Inter Milan's Romelu Lukaku and Roma's Chris Smalling. The two former Manchester United team-mates will face each other in Friday's Serie A meeting between the two teams.

Above its headline, Corriere dello Sport ran a subhead which read: "Lukaku and Smalling, former team-mates at United - and today idols at Inter and Roma - go head to head tomorrow: the Scudetto and Champions League football are up for grabs."

Smalling described the headline as "wrong and highly insensitive" and urged the "editors involved in running this headline [to] take responsibility".

Meanwhile, Lukaku branded it "the most dumbest of headlines I have ever seen in my career".

Following those statements, AS Roma and Inter's city rivals AC Milan issued joint statements announcing that the newspaper would be banned from their training facilities for the rest of 2019, with both clubs refusing to carry out media activities with the paper until January.

The statement read: "AS Roma and AC Milan publicly condemn the front page headline published today by Corriere dello Sport.

"We believe that players, clubs, supporters and the media must be united in the fight against racism in football and we all have a responsibility to be very precise in the words we choose and the messages we deliver.

"In response to the ‘BLACK FRIDAY’ headline published today by the newspaper, Roma and Milan have decided to ban Corriere dello Sport from our training facilities for the rest of the year and our players will not carry out any media activities with the newspaper during this period.

"Both clubs are aware that the actual newspaper article associated with the ‘BLACK FRIDAY’ headline did portray an anti-racist message and for this reason, we have only banned Corriere dello Sport until January.

"We remain totally committed to tackling racism."

In the article the newspaper appeared to attempt to highlight the league's racism problem.

"In the faces of those idiots who boo, tomorrow everyone must instead go 'oooh' like children. It will be a Black Friday, but this is not an end-of-season sale," it said.

It went on to describe Lukaku and Smalling as "two giants of colour".

However, anti-discrimination organisation Fare network condemned the front page and its executive director Piara Powar branded it "at the very least clumsy", while Lukaku and Smalling both responded on Thursday afternoon.

He told the PA news agency: "Part of the problem we have with Italy and countries like that at the moment is people do not know where to draw a line.

"They don't know what is the right or wrong thing to do, what is appropriate or inappropriate and what might be racism and what might be acceptable.

"If this was two English players - Lukaku is Belgian obviously - and they had said it was a 'St George's Day clash' or both were Belgians and it was the 'Battle of Brussels' that would be different, but they are highlighting their race.

"Would they ever take two white Italian players and say it's 'White Tuesday'? They wouldn't and this is the issue. Why would you pick out two players who are black and highlight their race as a way to build up to the match? It crosses the line of acceptability."

Following the backlash, Corriere dello Sport editor Ivan Zazzaroni posted a statement on his paper's website, claiming the writer's intention was to celebrate the "magnificent wealth of diversity" in football.

Zazzaroni wrote: "'Black Friday', for those who want to understand it and can understand it, was only praising diversity, taking pride in diversity, the magnificent wealth of diversity. If you don't understand it, it's because you can't do that.

"It's an innocent article, perfectly argued by (journalist) Roberto Perrone, that has been made poisonous by those who have poison inside them."

Inter did not reference the newspaper article, but tweeted: "Football is passion, culture and brotherhood. We are and will always be against all forms of discrimination."

Additional reporting by PA.

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