Kehinde Ayanboade
A Television Commentator, Luciano Passarani has been sacked after he uttered on-air that the club’s defenders should feed former Manchester United striker, Romelu Lukaku bananas.
Luciano Passirani, appearing on channel TopCalcio24, said of the Inter Milan front man: “The only way to come up against him is maybe giving him 10 bananas to eat.”
The 80-year-old was immediately forced to apologize and the station’s director, Fabio Ravezzani, has now insisted he will never appear on the network again.
Romelu Lukaku, 26, who joined Inter in the last summer, previously faced a fresh racism storm in Italy after scoring the winning penalty in a 2-1 victory at Cagliari on September 1. As he stepped up to take the spot-kick, Cagliari fans could be heard making monkey noises at him from behind the goal.
Passirani, 80, a guest commentator on TopCalcio24, made the fresh racist outburst while discussing the striker’s goal scoring prowess. “If you go one-on-one with him he will murder you,” Passirani said.
“The only way to come up against him is maybe give him 10 bananas to eat.”
Programme director Ravezzani said, despite Passirani’s “immediate apologies”, that “he could no longer participate in our broadcasts”.
“Lukaku, who helped his side to a 1-0 win against Udinese on Saturday. “Mr Passirani is 80 years old and to compliment Lukaku he used a metaphor that turned out to be racist,” added Ravezzani.
“I think it was a terrible lack of momentary lucidity. I cannot tolerate any kind of errors, even if momentary.”
Passirani had said earlier: “I don’t see in the Italian league a player like Lukaku in any team, not in AC Milan, Inter, Rome, Lazio. He’s one of the strongest and I like him a lot because he’s one of the strongest, he’s at least twice as strong as (Duvan) Zapata from Atalanta.”
After making the monkey comparison, Passirani apologised on air. Ravezzani added in a later tweet: “Only a part of the transmission was spread widely, cutting off the guest’s subsequent apology that he had a moment of unpredictable confusion while trying to make a joke. But the gravity of the comment remains and requires equally serious measures.”
Lukaku recently supported calls for players to walk off the pitch on hearing racist abuse. After he was abused by Cagliari fans, he released a statement the following day in which he claimed “we are going backwards” on dealing with the problem.
Marcus Rashford, Paul Pogba and Chelsea’s Tammy Abraham have also suffered abuse on social media this season after missing spot kicks.
