PARIS (AP) — The French Football Federation has committed on Tuesday to file a complaint with FIFA for the “racist and discriminatory comments” made by some players of the Argentine national team in the celebrations following their Copa America title win, which directly target players of the French team.
Argentina defeated Colombia 1-0 on Sunday and secured their third title in three years, and in a video posted on Instagram by Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernández, who plays for Chelsea, showed the albiceleste players singing chants about the French players with African ancestry.
What are the criticisms against Enzo Fernández?
One of Fernández's teammates at Chelsea, French defender Wesley Fofana, posted the video of the Argentine national team on his social media accounts on Tuesday and described it as "uninhibited racism."
Fofana, who has family ties to Ivory Coast, is one of several black French players in Chelsea's first team, and he also stopped following Fernández on social media.
The same chants, by some Argentine fans, arose before France and Argentina faced each other in the World Cup final two years ago, a match that ended with the first title for the albiceleste team since 1986. Until now, the Argentine team's players had not been seen performing those hooligan chants.
"Given the seriousness of these comments, which go against the values of sports and human rights, the president of the Federation has decided to directly contact his Argentine counterpart and FIFA to file a legal complaint for racist and discriminatory comments," said the French organization in a statement issued on Tuesday.
The derogatory chants target French players of African descent, from various countries, who hold French passports. They also focus in a racist and derogatory manner on Kylian Mbappé. Although in Fernández's video it cuts before the complete chant is heard, its content (which Metro World News will not reproduce due to its strong racist connotations) is unfortunately well-known.
FIFA did not confirm on Tuesday whether the French complaint had been filed.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said that football and its 211 national federations must have a zero-tolerance approach towards racism, and in May he committed to relaunching a task force to monitor incidents.
Enzo Fernández's apologies
During Tuesday night, on his social media, Fernández offered a statement with apologies, but using a very well-known and repeated script in these circumstances, with phrases like “the song includes very offensive language and there are no excuses for those words”, “I am against discrimination in all its forms” and “that video, that moment, and those words do not reflect my beliefs or my way of being”.