Juan Jesus fears that Acerbi’s acquittal will become a “serious precedent”

On Wednesday evening, Napoli’s Brazilian footballer Juan Jesus commented publicly for the first time on the sports court’s decision to acquit Inter player Francesco Acerbi, accused of having addressed a racist insult to him in the Inter-Napoli match on 17 March. The judge considered that there was not enough evidence to convict Acerbi and to have “reasonable certainty” of the veracity of Juan Jesus’ testimony, according to which Acerbi had told him “go away black, you’re just a black man”. Juan Jesus said he was very sorry for the decision, that he understood it little and that he did not feel “protected in any way”. He also expressed concern that the sentence could become a “serious precedent” to “justify a posteriori” racist behavior in football.

During the match the game was interrupted for more than a minute because Juan Jesus went to complain to the referee that he had received a racist insult. Acerbi had approached and apologized blatantly, Juan Jesus had accepted the apology and after the match, answering a question about what had happened, he had limited himself to saying that Acerbi had “gone a little further with his words”, but that for him the matter had ended with an apology. After the match, however, Acerbi denied having addressed a racist insult to Juan Jesus, who at that point publicly reported the insult he had received. The sports prosecutor’s office then opened an investigation which ended with Acerbi’s acquittal.

Juan Jesus underlined that he avoided interrupting the match to avoid “the inconvenience it would have caused to the spectators who were watching the match”. After Acerbi’s apologies, Juan Jesus immediately calmed down and the game resumed normally. After the sentence, Juan Jesus commented on what happened, and the risks that there could be in similar cases in the future:

“Probably, after this decision, those who find themselves in my situation will act in a very different way to protect themselves and try to put a stop to the shame of racism which, unfortunately, is struggling to disappear.”

Then he commented on the content of the sentence:

I do not feel protected in any way by this decision which struggles between having to admit that “proof of the offense has certainly been achieved” and maintaining that there is no certainty of its discriminatory nature which, again according to the decision, only I and “in good faith” would have perceived.

The judge had in fact said that the discriminatory content was “confined to the words of the offended party”, that is, it could be deduced from Juan Jesus’ testimony alone. The other elements he had available were for example external testimonies (from the referee, other players) and footage of the match, from which the judge says he was unable to confirm that version. According to journalistic indiscretions, before the prosecutor’s office Acerbi instead claimed to have said to Juan Jesus “I’ll make you black”. In the sentence the judge says that he has reconstructed that there was certainly an offence, even admitted by Acerbi himself, but that this would not have had a discriminatory, i.e. racist, nature: essentially he says that he believes Acerbi’s version, but also that he does not want question the good faith of Juan Jesus.

In this regard, Juan Jesus said he did not understand “how the phrase ‘go away black, you’re just a black…’ can certainly be offensive, but not discriminatory”. Then he concluded:

I can’t explain why, only the next day and in retreat with the national team, Acerbi began a U-turn on the version of events and instead did not immediately deny, as soon as the match was over, what had actually happened. I didn’t expect an ending of this kind which I fear – but I hope I’m wrong – could set a serious precedent to subsequently justify certain behaviors.

2024-03-28 11:02:54
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