Perhaps the only fortunate thing about racism being quite real is that you can plan for it to pop up.
And so when Dani Alves picked up the banana tossed at his feet before a corner kick and proceeded to eat it, the act was the culmination of a long plan orchestrated by the Barcelona player, his teammate Neymar and a public relations form.
As you can imagine, plenty of times a player has said, “The next time some #$%@#$ throws a banana at me, I’m gonna (insert action here).” Neymar and Alves saw it as an opportunity to orchestrate a public display against racism.
Stars across the world Tweeted photos eating bananas with the hashtag #WeAreAllMonkeys and #somostodosmacacos. Philippe Countino, Luis Suarez, Sergio Aguero and Marta were among the players to take part.
The Mirror explains how it all went down:Spanish paper AS claims that it was a campaign planned well in advance, after the Brazilian duo were racially abused at Espanyol back in late March.
Together with marketing agency Loducca, Neymar and Alves planned to eat the next banana thrown at them live in front of a TV audience, and use that moment to kick-start a social media campaign.
Within minutes of Alves eating a banana thrown at him on the pitch, Neymar tweeted his picture, which has been mimicked by a host of high-profile sportsmen, celebrities and political figures.
Pretty genius (and pretty sad that it took less than a month for a banana toss to be aimed at one of the two plotting players). If you missed it, the banana-throwing suspect has been arrested and is receiving his punishment soon.
