Torino have been criticised for their choice of picture to show Nicolas Nkoulou’s goal celebration, where he took the knee in honour of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Cameroon international scored the opening goal in Saturday’s 1-1 Serie A draw with Parma.
He initially hugged his teammates, including Andrea Belotti, then took the knee for a moment and held up his fist.
Nkoulou then resumed embracing the other Toro players and later dedicated the goal to “my brother, George Floyd.”
Torino have been criticised for their choice of picture to show Nicolas Nkoulou’s goal celebration, where he took the knee in honour of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Cameroon international scored the opening goal in Saturday’s 1-1 Serie A draw with Parma.
He initially hugged his teammates, including Andrea Belotti, then took the knee for a moment and held up his fist.
Nkoulou then resumed embracing the other Toro players and later dedicated the goal to “my brother, George Floyd.”
Torino had intended to make this a positive statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, using the hashtag when posting the image on Twitter.
However, the picture they chose had Nkoulou on one knee in front of Belotti, who was standing and looking awkward.
The optics of this were immediately picked up on by social media users, who saw the image as inherently racist, a black man kneeling in front of a white man who is standing.
Nkoulou himself used the same image on Instagram Stories and made no mention of offence.
Torino had also tweeted out a picture of the entire squad taking the knee during a training session earlier in the week.
While in the Premier League, players have been taking the knee during a minute’s silence before kick-off, in Serie A that minute is reserved for the 34,000 in the country who died from COVID-19 over the last four months.
Kneeling during that minute’s silence would therefore be seen as mixing up different messages and causing confusion.
Unfortunately, Serie A and Italian society in general has been known to inadvertently make racist statements, often while trying to send out an explicitly anti-racist message.
The worst example was the artwork of three monkeys unveiled before the Coppa Italia Final last summer, which was meant to reflect the foolishness of these insults when all humans are descended from apes, but obviously came across as desperately tone-deaf.
#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/KrnV56iK86
— Torino FC English (@TorinoFC1906_En) June 20, 2020
Against racism. Everytime, everywhere. #BlackLivesMatter #SFT pic.twitter.com/qxG0jNN1CJ
— Torino Football Club (@TorinoFC_1906) June 2, 2020