{"id":52843,"date":"2026-02-12T15:52:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T15:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/52843"},"modified":"2026-02-12T15:52:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T15:52:30","slug":"balotelli-says-he-was-racially-abused-playing-in-uae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/52843","title":{"rendered":"Balotelli says he was racially abused playing in UAE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div style=\"min-height:300px\">\n<p><strong>Former Italy forward Mario Balotelli said he was racially insulted while playing for Emirati second-tier side Al-Ittifaq during a match against Dubai City on Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 35-year-old, who previously played for Manchester City, Liverpool, AC Milan and Inter Milan, joined Al-Ittifaq last month after a stint at Italian side Genoa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday, during a match, I was racially abused multiple times. I was repeatedly told: \u2018Uh uh uh, you go eat banana. There is absolutely no place for racism in football, or in the society,\u201d Balotelli wrote on Instagram after the 2-0 loss at Hatta.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis kind of behaviour cannot be normalised, excused, or ignored. I\u2019m speaking out to bring awareness \u2013 not just for myself, but for every player who has been subjected to this. Enough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Al-Ittifaq and Dubai City did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Balotelli, who has been vocal about several incidents of racism throughout his career, said he had not expected to face the problem in the UAE.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve always condemned all acts of racism, but I didn\u2019t expect it here. I hope serious measures are taken to prevent this from happening again,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/arynews.tv\/balotelli-says-he-was-racially-abused-playing-in-uae\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Italy forward Mario Balotelli said he was racially insulted while playing for Emirati second-tier side Al-Ittifaq during a match against Dubai City on Wednesday. The 35-year-old, who previously played for Manchester City, Liverpool, AC Milan and Inter Milan, joined Al-Ittifaq last month after a stint at Italian side Genoa. \u201cToday, during a match, I was racially abused multiple times&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52844,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":16,"label":"Pakistan"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-content\/uploads\/1770911550_unnamed-file.jpg",750,369,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"frkhokhar@gmail.com","author_link":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/author\/frkhokhargmail-com"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":16,"name":"Pakistan","slug":"pakistan","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":16,"taxonomy":"category","description":"All about Pakistan","parent":0,"count":2563,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":16,"category_count":2563,"category_description":"All about Pakistan","cat_name":"Pakistan","category_nicename":"pakistan","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsvog.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}