La Liga president Javier Tebas apologised on Wednesday for Sunday’s online rant at Real Madrid player Vinicius Jr after the Brazilian took to social media to complain about racist insults he suffered and the Spanish soccer league’s inaction.
“Well, it seems that the result has not been very good, right?” Tebas told Reuters in an interview, referring to his much-criticised comments on Twitter in which he suggested that Vinicius find out more about what the league is doing to combat racism “before you criticise and slander LaLiga”.
“I mean, to all those who have understood that this was an error due to the form, due to the time…I have to apologise,” he said, adding that it was not his intention to attack Vinicius and blaming “the heat of the moment”.
“I apologise to Vinicius and to anyone that understood that I was attacking Vinicius.”
He said that he felt “impotent” to tackle racism in soccer as under Spanish law La Liga can merely detect and reporting racist incidents, urging legislative changes for it to have sanctioning powers to be able to fight racism more effectively.