Moise Kean spends day with children’s charity

Kyle Picknell

Moise Kean is a fucking champion

Make no mistake, Moise Kean has nothing to prove to us. Remember that. It’s the same fallacy that occurred in England with Raheem Sterling after he was repeatedly dragged by the racist newspaper headlines so commonplace in this country. Once he became a bonafide superstar, not just one of the best players in the national team but in the Premier League itself, it was treated as some sort of vindication. It was “well done Raheem”, well done for proving all the rags wrong and showing them up to be the xenophobic bile that they are.

This was nonsense in itself; he had absolutely nothing to prove to us in the first place, no debt to pay; especially not because the fucking Daily Mail and The Sun were plastering him across their front pages with stories about him getting a tattoo and buying his mom a house. Why should he need to demonstrate to us that his character was good, just because he’s a young, successful black man?

Moise Kean, after scoring the second goal and celebrating in front of the jeering, racist Cagliari support that had been making monkey noises since the first minute of play, certainly doesn’t have obligation to now prove himself a good person because of some dickheads at a football match. Nor does he because Leonardo Bonucci, a white man, thinks the blame for the abuse, which occurred between a large group of evidently racist supporters and a footballer, who was simply playing football, and scoring a goal whilst playing football, and celebrating that goal, which came in extremely difficult circumstances that he should never have been subject to in the first place, should be split exactly down the middle.

Moise Kean didn’t need to spend the day after this occurred at the Paideia foundation in Turin, a non-profit educational charity that focuses on socio-economically disadvantaged students. He didn’t need to go and visit this group of children to put a smile on their faces. And his. We did not require that of him. Let me be clear.

As it is with Sterling, and Danny Rose, and Callum Hudson-Odoi, and every other football player that has had to listen to racist bile flow from a football crowd, it would be wrong and should be unanimously condemned regardless of who they are as a person. What they do off the pitch is irrelevant and it is always irrelevant. So what if they have hearts of gold? It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

But anyway, that’s what he did. That’s what he chose to do on the day after he was racially abused for 90 minutes, scored the decisive goal and was consequently abandoned by his teammate, Bonucci, and manager, Massimiliano Allegri. Two men with vast amounts of experience in the game, almost 50 years between them, two men who told him he was partially to blame.

In doing so, he doesn’t prove anything. He doesn’t prove that racism is wrong or that it has no place in football. It doesn’t prove that it shouldn’t have been directed at Moise Kean or that he doesn’t deserve the abuse. It doesn’t prove that this is a real cause now. These are all things we knew already, that Bonucci and Allegri and the Cagliari fans should have known already. This isn’t a response to anything. This is just him.

All it proves is that this man, beyond being an extremely gifted footballer, beyond being – quite clearly – a fantastic role model too, will rise far above the hate. In celebrating the way he did, confronting the racists, standing up to them, defying them, he showed more bravery than Max Allegri and Leonardo Bonucci and the cowards hidden away in the top tier ever will.

Moise Kean is 19 years old and all this proves is how much Juventus Football Club and the Italian National Team already doesn’t deserve him. Those historic pillars of football who, through the principles and actions of their owners, coaches, players or supporters, sometimes all four, are still lost in the mire of where the game used to be. All it proves is that thanks to the courage of people like him, football is slowly changing for the better. All it proves is that he is bigger than them already.

https://twitter.com/IFTVofficial/status/1113465868887842816

Moise Kean was involved in a charitable cause today after being racially targeted yesterday.

He attended an event organized by the Paideia foundation and brought a smile to the faces of many less fortunate kids, who now look up to him.

👏 pic.twitter.com/hhund7lNNC

— Arjun Pradeep (@IndianRegista) April 3, 2019