An Italian-Argentine rugby player is suspended for giving a rotten banana to a Guinean compatriot

Treviso’s international Italian pillar Ivan Nemerborn in Argentina, was suspended until the end of the season for the Italian Rugby Federation (FIR) after an investigation established that it was this rugby player who gave a fellow Guinean a rotten banana for Christmas.

As a result of this federal court decision, Nemer (24 years old, 11 caps for the national team) was suspended until 30 June, the AFP agency reported today, adding that the rugby player has renounced to appeal to the FIR to challenge this sentence.

On 21 December the Italian international pillar Chef Traore (28 years old, 10 caps as an international) denounced in his Twitter account instagram who had received a rotten banana wrapped the day before in a gift exchange that team members held anonymously on the eve of last Christmas.

“Christmas is approaching and as per tradition in the team it is time for the Secret Santa Claus. A pleasant and playful moment. A moment in which you can afford to give anonymous gifts to your companions, even scathing and ironic gifts. Yesterday, when it was my turn, I found a banana in my present. A rotten banana, inside a wet bag, ”wrote the athlete on social media about him.

“Not only is it shocking, but it is what hurt me the most was seeing most of my classmates laugh. As if it were normal,” he later denounced.

“I’m used to, or rather I’ve had to get used to, putting on a brave face whenever I hear racist jokes, but what happened yesterday was different“, he has declared.

His club, which has reaffirmed its own at all times “firm condemnation of any expression of racism”he explained that the entire squad and coaching staff apologized to Traoré.

In its press release this Friday, the FIR specified that to define the penalty for Iván Nemer, consideration was given to the player’s willingness to clarify what happened, the apology presented to his teammate, the acknowledgment of the damage to Benetton’s image Rugby, that of Italian rugby and sport in general, as well as the exemplary behavior that the athlete has always maintained on and off the pitch during his career”.

“Racism has never had and will never have any role in my life, just as it shouldn’t have any role in anyone’s life (…) I come from a multicultural country like Argentina, where cultures have mixed for more than a century,” recalled Nemer, quoted in the same statement.