Seven years ago, I was playing for Milan in a friendly game when a group of fans made monkey noises every time one of our black players touched the ball.
After 26 minutes I told the referee, “If they do that again, I’m gonna stop playing.”
He said, “No, don’t worry, just continue.”
Then, as I was trying to dribble past a player, I heard them again.
I grabbed the ball, booted it toward the stands and began to walk off the pitch.
It wasn’t the first time I had been racially abused. But this time I just exploded. When the referee tried to get me to play on, I said, “Shut the fuck up.” (Sorry for my language.) I told him, “You had the power to do something. You did nothing.” When a rival player wanted me to stay on, I said, “You shut the fuck up as well. What did you do about it? Do you like what they’re doing?”
As I walked towards the tunnel, our captain, Massimo Ambrosini, asked me, “Are you sure about what you’re doing?”
I said, “One hundred percent sure.”
Alberto Lingria/AFP via Getty ImagesLet me take a moment to explain why I did what I did. Some people have said that I’d never have done it in a Champions League game, where our team might be deducted points or whatever. But I couldn’t control it. I had bottled up so much anger and pain, and that day the lid just blew off. I know it’s difficult for white people to understand, but that’s because they have never been hated because their skin is a different colour. Still, let me try to explain.
When I was nine years old, I went to play in a tournament in East Germany. I grew up in a neighbourhood in Berlin that was poor, and that was also home to people who were from every corner of the world: Russia, China, Egypt, Turkey, everywhere. When we fought each other, it was because we disliked each other in that moment, not because of discrimination. I never experienced racism there.
But at the tournament in East Germany, I heard parents shouting at me from the sidelines.
“Tackle the n*****.”
“Don’t let the n***** play.”
I was so … confused. I had only heard that word like maybe in a song or a movie or something, but I knew it was something against my colour. I felt so alone. I felt as if I was in a place where I was not supposed to be — but this was only a six-hour drive from Berlin. How could they love me in one part of the country and hate me in another just because I’m a different colour? As a kid, you don’t understand that.
I had never spoken to anyone about how to deal with a situation like that. So on the bus back to Berlin, I burst into tears. My teammates started crying, too. None of us understood what had happened. I never told my mum about it. I just ignored it and kept going. I thought, It’ll go away.
But it didn’t. And every time I played in East Germany, it got heavier.
“For every goal you score, we’re gonna give you a banana.”
“I’m gonna put you in a box and send you back to your country, fucking n*****.”
It hurt so badly. When I was 14, I asked my teacher, “Do you see me differently from the other kids?”
He said, “No. Why?”
I said, “So why do they see me differently in the east? This is my country. I’m German. My mum’s German. So why do they want to send me away?”
He explained that there are just some people in this world who are stupid. But I began to cry. I still couldn’t understand it. And soon the confusion turned into suspicion. You begin to think that people don’t like you, even though you don’t know them. Every mixed-race guy in Germany has this. It’s like, Why are you looking at me? You don’t like me? You want trouble? Let’s go.
I became aggressive. Disturbed. I got red cards all the time. I was a hothead.
But you know what the worst part was?
No one ever stood up for me.
They knew what was happening to me. They heard the racism — and they just accepted it. The parents stayed quiet. The referee? Nothing. The coach? “Just ignore it.”
So I did. I stored my anger inside. I became numb to it.
But when I heard those monkey noises in January 2013, all the pain, all the sadness — it all came out. I snapped. I didn’t care if I got in trouble. I had worked all my life to play for one of the biggest teams in the world, and now I was going to be treated like I was when I was a kid?? I just went, No. I’m done with this. I’m going to fight these guys.
As I walked off, a lot of people stood up and applauded me. And then — and this is the key — my teammates walked off with me. Not just the black ones. All of them. I still get goose bumps talking about that. When I got to the dressing room, I took off my clothes just to show everyone that I was not going back out there. The referee came in and asked us, “Do you want to continue playing?” And at that moment Ambrosini stood up and said, “If Prince doesn’t play, no one plays.”
Chapeau.
That episode became huge news around the world. Within a day they knew about it in Ghana, in China, in Brazil. The press was all over it. Big players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand were supporting me and talking about what a disgrace the supporters were. My phone blew up with calls and messages. Overnight I became an ambassador for the fight against racism.
None of that happened because a black person walked off the pitch. No.
It happened because white people walked off with him.
That was the message that changed the world.
At least it did for a little while.
At the time I thought that this could be the change we needed. I really did. FIFA invited me to meet Joseph Blatter. He asked me, “What can we do about it?” Then in March, FIFA set up an anti-discrimination task force and invited me to join it. It seemed perfect. I would train and play games and stuff, but I would also give these people input, and then they would introduce campaigns, rules and punishments. I also gave Blatter a suggestion: To put cameras and microphones in the stadiums. That way, if somebody chanted something racist — BANG, out.
I told Blatter, “Listen, try this. If it works, you’re a hero. If it doesn’t, O.K., you tried.”
After that, the task force had meetings. We talked and exchanged some emails.
But nothing really happened. Whenever I was playing people began to target me, hoping that I’d go nuts and walk off again. I’d go to the referee and tell him to do something, they would make an announcement over the stadium speakers, and then after a minute of quiet, the fans would just keep going. A month later, the media stopped talking about it.
And then in September 2016, I received an email from FIFA. I will never forget what it said.
It basically read, “The task force has fulfilled its mission. We did our job.”
They closed it down.
I called my agent and said, “This is a joke.” What did they achieve? What did they do? They fined teams 30,000 euros? And then the fans could return to the stadium the next day?? And their kids are going to see that and take that as an example??? What is 30,000 euros to a club? Nothing. That’s the punishment? That’s the consequence?
I honestly believe FIFA set up that task force just to make it seem as if they were doing something. I’m not even scared to say it. It’s a fact. I don’t know why they’re not doing more. You’d have to ask them. I can just assume that it’s more important to them to have VAR telling us whether the ball was over the line than to get rid of racism. They have so much money, they invest so much in cameras, goal-line technology, everything. But fighting racism? Nah. That doesn’t get more people into the stadium. That doesn’t bring in the big bucks. That’s what I think.
And remember, FIFA set up that task force in 2013. That’s SEVEN years ago. And now we’re still here talking about the exact same problems….
Nothing has changed. Nothing.
If anything, racism has gotten worse.
You know, we always look to the U.S. when we talk about racism, but it happens in Europe, too. Maybe we don’t die, maybe we’re not killed, but they push us down all the time. All the time. It’s just more hidden. When I’m out on the street, I can feel it in the way people behave. They look at you. They change sidewalks. When I’m in my car, I can see what they’re thinking. How can a black guy with tattoos drive a car like that? He must be a drug dealer or a rapper. Or maybe an athlete.
Why is it like that? Because racism is so deeply embedded in society. It’s systemic. And the white people who are on the top of this system, they don’t want it to change. Why would they? Things are going great for them, just like they did 300 years ago.
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