The La Liga president Javier Tebas criticised three Real Madrid players on Wednesday, including Kylian Mbappé, for not wearing a T-shirt properly in support of the people of Ceuta, a Spanish autonomous city in North Africa that has been hit by a migration crisis.
Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior and Ibrahima Konaté wore the commemorative T-shirt with the sleeves partially rolled up before Real Madrid’s 3-2 victory over Elche in La Liga on Tuesday. The rest of the players wore it in the usual way.
In doing so, the three players partially hid the message “We are all Ceutans”, referring to the inhabitants of this Spanish territory in North Africa. “We saw three players who decided not to put it on. Wearing it halfway is the same as not wearing it at all… it’s bad, very bad,” Tebas told reporters.
The initiative for the teams to wear these T-shirts came from a group of business leaders in the Valencian Community. Tebas explained that the proposal had been approved but not organised by La Liga, and stressed that “it is not a political act of any kind”.
La Liga teams playing matches that do not involve clubs from the Valencian Community have not been using the T-shirt. Miguel Ángel Montaño, president of the supporters’ club of Real Madrid in Ceuta, expressed his disappointment at the decision by the three players not to wear it properly.
No ‘political purpose’
“We were really excited to see the players wearing the T-shirts because we need support, but we were left puzzled when we saw that these three players had covered up the message,” Montaño told the Spanish media.
Villarreal hosted Real Betis on Monday and both teams wore the T-shirts in support of Ceuta. Levante also wore them before their match on Sunday against Barcelona, although the Catalan side chose not to wear it.
The controversy comes against a backdrop of mounting tension in Ceuta following the mass arrival of migrants. Tens of thousands of people entered the city from Morocco on 30 and 31 July. Most returned to Morocco a couple of hours after they arrived, but several thousand remained in Ceuta.
Local residents have been staging protests on a regular basis while the migrants continue camping on the beaches and sleeping in the streets. Protesters accuse the Spanish government of abandoning a city overwhelmed by a humanitarian crisis.
Abde Ezzalzouli, a Real Betis winger of Moroccan origin, came to the city’s defence on Tuesday on social media after receiving criticism for wearing the T-shirt.
“I want to make one thing clear: at no point was the T-shirt with a message aimed at the inhabitants of Ceuta used for a political purpose or out of contempt for my people, the Moroccan people,” Ezzalzouli wrote in a post on Instagram. The former Barcelona player described the gesture as an expression of social support for the city’s residents, “regardless of their nationality”.