Blow for blow. Despite scoring the equalizer (72nd) during the clash of the 3rd day of Serie A between Lazio and AC Milan (2-2), this Saturday, Rafael Leao was particularly targeted by the criticism from the Sky Sport Italia set after the match.
Former player and now consultant for the Italian channel, Paolo Di Canio, was virulent, accusing the Rossoneri striker of displaying a “shameful” attitude for having left himself out of the group (with Theo Hernandez) during the freshening break granted a few seconds after his goal. The Portuguese and the Frenchman therefore did not go to collect instructions from their coach, which had the merit of infuriating the 56-year-old consultant.
“I hear people say that they are just ‘kids’ and that this explains this behaviour, but they cost Milan 8 million euros. (…) In my day they would have been pinned against a wall and beaten. It’s a disgrace!” Di Canio said at the end of the match.
And it didn’t take long to get a response from the 25-year-old winger who posted a photo on his X account on Monday showing one of Di Canio’s controversial celebrations, from January 2005, during a victory for Lazio, his club at the time, in the Rome derby: a fascist salute (punishable by law in Italy only since the beginning of 2024) towards the Lazio ultras parked in the corners of the Stadio Olimpico. A post accompanied by three suspension points as if to remind us that the former Roman striker is far from being an example in his behavior.
“That’s what I regret the most… I carry with me the ‘symbols’ of what I was and what I did, including my mistakes… but I was never racist,” Di Canio had already tried to justify himself to Corriere della Sera in 2017. A year earlier, he was ousted from his job at Sky Sport after showing off a tattoo on set in honour of the “Duce” Benito Mussolini.
“I didn’t even notice it during the cool break”
Theo Hernandez, for his part, did not respond to the criticism. Left out of the starting eleven by their coach Paulo Fonseca, the two players, authors of this little controversy, had come on during the game, in the second half, before both being involved in the equalizing goal a few moments later.
If the Milan coach initially invoked a lack of freshness to justify the absence of the two players in the starting eleven, he also tried to calm things down in a press conference: “There is no problem. I didn’t even notice it during the freshening-up break. Théo came to talk to me after the match. I explained my decision to them this week, they accepted it. We have to stop creating false problems”, replied the Portuguese coach.
Original article published on RMC Sport
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