Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior have drawn criticism in Spain after removing shirts in support of Ceuta minutes before Real Madrid’s La Liga match at Elche on September 15, unlike the rest of both teams.
Players from both sides walked out at Elche’s Martínez Valero stadium, in Alicante province, southeast Spain, wearing shirts reading “Todos somos caballas” (“We are all caballas“), the nickname for the people of Ceuta, literally “mackerels”. The back carried the name of the city and the Spanish coat of arms, according to Morocco World News.
Mbappé and Vinícius came out last, with the shirts folded over their shoulders so that the slogan was largely hidden, El Debate reported. Both took them off after the team photograph and before shaking hands with the Elche players, while centre-back Ibrahima Konaté removed his almost as soon as he had put it on.
Real Madrid published the team photograph on its website as a show of solidarity with Ceuta and made no reference to the two players. The club won 3-2 with a stoppage-time goal from Carlos Espí.
The shirts are part of a campaign by the Asociación Valenciana de Empresarios, a Valencia business association, which has asked companies to stand with Ceuta after the entry of tens of thousands of people from Morocco on July 30-31. Villarreal and Real Betis wore them on September 14, after Burgos and Levante had done so earlier in the campaign, El Gol Digital reported.
Betis winger Abdessamad Ezzalzouli, a Morocco international known as Ez Abde, was threatened on social media by Moroccan supporters after wearing the shirt. In a statement on Instagram he said the gesture had not been political or directed against Morocco, though he added that it was not an apology.
Real Madrid’s own supporters had backed the city on September 8, when the south end of the Santiago Bernabéu formed a mosaic of Ceuta flags before the Champions League match against Inter Milan. The ground chanted “Ceuta is not for sale, Ceuta defends itself”, the slogan heard at rallies across Spain and outside the European Parliament on Ceuta Day, September 2.
On September 7 the club had called it categorically false that it had given any instruction to bar Spanish or Ceuta flags from the ground.
Ceuta, which along with Melilla gives the European Union its only land borders with Africa, has about 84,000 inhabitants. The Spanish Interior Ministry counts at least 72,000 entries on July 30-31 and the city government puts the figure above 80,000.
Ceuta president Juan Jesús Vivas said on September 11 that about 13,000 migrants remained in the city, while the Spanish Government’s latest estimate is close to 10,000.
