Corriere dello Sport condemned for 'Black Friday' front page with Lukaku and Smalling

The Italian newspaper Corriere dello Sport has been heavily criticised for a front page with the headline “Black Friday” in regards to the former Manchester United teammates Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling facing each other on Friday.

Above the headline, the paper wrote: “Lukaku and Smalling, former teammates at Manchester United and today idols at Inter and Roma, this is the battle within the battle tomorrow with the scudetto and a Champions League place at stake.”

The paper was universally condemned, with Smalling’s club, Roma, taking to social media to show their disgust at the front page, tweeting: “No one. Absolutely no one. Not a single soul”, before the words “Corriere dello Sport headline writer” and a picture of the front page.

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.”

The Fare network, which works against discrimination and for social inclusion in football, also tweeted, saying: “The media fuels racism every day. This is today’s edition of Italian sport daily Corriere dello Sport.”

Fare’s executive director, Piara Powar, added: “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.

“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.”

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,” the article said. It went on to describe Lukaku and Smalling as “two giants of colour”.

Corriere editor Ivan Zazzaroni subsequently posted a statement on his paper’s website, claiming the writer’s intention was to celebrate the “magnificent wealth of diversity” in football. “‘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,” wrote Zazzaroni. “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.”

Lukaku and Smalling have both made successful starts to their careers in Italy. Lukaku has 10 goals in 14 Serie A games with Inter top of the league, one point ahead of Juventus. Smalling has been an ever-present since making his debut against Atalanta towards the end of September, having scored two goals and provided one assist.

Serie A has again been plagued by racist incidents this season, with Lukaku himself and the Brescia forward Mario Balotelli among those to be racially abused by supporters during games. An Italian TV pundit was also sacked for saying the only way to stop Lukaku was to give “him 10 bananas to eat”.

Only last week all 20 clubs in Italy’s top tier signed an open letter which called on “all those who love Italian football” to unite to try to eradicate its “serious problem with racism”.