Chelsea centre-back Rudiger posted an article on Players Tribune:
They called me Nico and they were all shouting, "Love you yo (glorifying terms), go eat bananas," and every time I touched the ball, they made a monkey-like noise. It's not just a few people doing it, it's the behavior of most of the Li lazio fans in the 2017 Roma derby. It's not the first time I've experienced racist insults, but it's the worst, it's real resentment, and you can see it in their eyes. At that moment, I didn't respond, I didn't walk off the pitch, I didn't want to give them this kind of energy; but inside, even if you are strong, as long as you are a human being whose heart beats normally, you will always remember this.
How does the football world respond whenever something like this happens? People would say, "Oh hey, that's horrible", and clubs and players would say a few words on Instagram: "Racism is extinct!!! Everyone acted like "just a few idiots." The investigation will start, but it doesn't really change anything, and every once in a while, we launch massive campaigns on social media, and then everyone feels good about themselves, and then everything goes back to normal.
It didn't really change anything.
Tell me why the media and the fans and the players can come together to stop the UEFA Premier League in 48 hours, but when there is an obvious racist insult on a football pitch or on the Internet, things always get "a little complicated"? Maybe because there aren't just a few idiots in the stands, maybe it has to go back to a deeper reason.
You know, I often think of Daniele De Rossi. He approached me after the match against Lazio and said something I didn't think I had ever heard. I was still very emotional and angry, and De Rossi sat down next to me and said, "Tony, I will never feel the same way as you until now, but it can make me understand your pain, what is going on in your head?" He didn't tweet, he didn't upload an all-black square image, he really cared.
There are a lot of people in football who speak in public, but they've never approached you in private. De Rossi really wanted to know how I felt, this guy was an iconic figure at the club, a legend. When I first stepped into the dressing room, just looking at him made me feel like I was just an uneasy kid. But in my toughest moments, De Rossi cared about me from the perspective of an ordinary person who wanted to understand me.
Will I say this make some people uncomfortable? Maybe, but I know the whole world is waiting to see the Champions League final this weekend, and I want to tell something real with my own voice. It's not a 10-minute conversation, it's not a copywriting headline on Instagram, it's my life.
Would you like to hear my story? Would you also like to try to understand?
There's a community code that everyone knows. I don't care who you are, if you're like me in Neukölln in Berlin, or in the suburbs of France, or in any immigrant neighborhood in the world, you know the code: If you see someone's mother walking down the street with a bag of bags taken back from the market, whatever you're doing, stop at once and help her. Whether or not you finished a fight with her son on the football field 5 minutes ago, you'll also help carry all the weights to her apartment!!! That's your responsibility.
Even though we come from different backgrounds or speak different languages, it will also become our consensus that we are all neighbors who live in this "community". Even though we all look like jerks, we're also jerks who belong to the same place. It's a cold world, but in people, there's always warmth. This is one of the first lessons you learned as a child, and unfortunately you have to learn other difficult lessons as well.
One day I was walking down the street near my house when I saw an elderly German lady carrying bags from many grocery stores, feeling like a grandmother, very thin and struggling. So I went up to her and helped, and I said, "Here, I'll help you carry your things, and I can take them up." I will never forget the lady who turned to me, and the look of fear on her face. She thought I was trying to grab the bag in her hand, and she really thought I was robbing her. It's only a moment, but you can't change that moment. That purity and holiness – is gone.
That's when I realized, oh, that's how people are going to see me in the future, huh? I was born here, but I will never be a real German for some Germans. It was a bittersweet feeling because Germany had given my family everything. My parents were refugees from the civil war in the Republic of Sierra Leone, and many people don't know what was going on there. Africa? What is Africa? All you can think of is a bunch of hungry children on TV with big bellies, and you'll feel sad for a few seconds, and then change channels. For some, this is Africa, in the third world, in the forgotten world.
Now it's time to talk about the mentality we call a "cat in the tree."
When you come from a place that is experiencing a civil war to a place as beautiful as Germany, the initial feeling is shock. Because when you open the news channel, you see a cat stuck in a tree, it climbs up the tree by itself, and it's just enjoying itself. But what have humans done? They sent out police and fire trucks because of the kitten, and people gathered under the trees, some of them crying. They arranged for the firefighter to climb the ladder, and then he rescued the cat, and they gave blankets and milk, and everyone was celebrating. Firefighters became heroes, and so did cats.
But what about the 2 million people displaced in Africa as a result of civil war? That's just a number. They would cry when they treated kittens, and they would treat African people with disdain.
I still want to make a point: my parents are very grateful to be able to live in Germany. They refuse to call Neuklin a community, and in fact, for them, it is "paradise on earth." No more gunshots were heard, and no bombs flew around at night. It's not about money, it's just peace.
For us, being rich is a different feeling. Rich for us is to have food to eat, to drink, if you have a large plate of chili stew rice and chicken on your table? Explain that you had a good day that day, my friend. For me, football has never been a dream, but a livelihood. I almost chose to be a plumber or a baker or a lawyer, which is all "giving" jobs; if I tell you that I dream of owning a few luxury cars or playing in the Champions League, I'm lying. No, this football trip was just about taking my family away from Neuklin, and that was it.
I can recall the exact moment when I had this realization, when I was in the kitchen one day asking my mom for money, I think it was for a school trip or something like that, I just asked for a few euros, but she couldn't give it to me. I remember what really hurt me, not because she said no, but the look on her face. We know my mother better than anyone else, and what breaks my heart is that I can see that she wants to give me the money, but she just can't.
It's no exaggeration to say that I was telling myself at the time, "I have to be a man now, I have to get my family out of here." I was eight years old, really. If you hadn't grown up in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood, you might think I was exaggerating. But I assure you, there are still people who will say, "Eight? Brother, you're in luck. I was going to be a man when I was six. Sometimes it's really hard to empathize with outsiders.
I remember when Thomas Tuchel first came to Chelsea as manager, he asked me an interesting question. Obviously, we are all German, but we don't know each other in private. I had a tough time at Chelsea before Tuchel took over, so when he came to me, I guess he wanted to get to know me. He said, "Tony, let me ask you something. I watched your game and I observed that you were very aggressive on the pitch, you played with a lot of emotion, where did that come from? ”
Then I told him my story, and we talked for a while. But really, I'm basically just saying one word... Neuklin. It's that simple.
I used to play the cement floor, and my sneakers were full of holes, which could basically be called sandals. Because I was so radical, people started calling me Rambo (an American action movie character) and I played football like I was trying to prove something because I really needed to.
"You don't belong here." Do you know how many times I've heard that? Do you know how many times I've been told to go back to Africa? Do you know how many times I've been called Nigo?
At the age of eight, I had to ask my father, "What does the word mean, Nigo?" Some of the children at school were eating a German-made snack called schoko küsse, a chocolate kiss, which they called Nico küsse. I had no idea what that word meant, so I went home and asked my father, who shared an insightful point with me.
He said, "It's an ignorant word, son. But the real reason these kids you say at school is because their parents always say it at home. When you're being called by that word growing up, you have only one choice: you can choose to ignore it and try to maintain your dignity, or you can fight back. In many cases, I had to fight back; in many cases, I was required to bleed. This mentality shaped me into a footballer.
Leaving is my dream, and I will do everything for it. I will never forget the day I left my family at 15 to join the Dortmund academy, my mother cried all week and she didn't want me to leave. Even now I think back to the memories of her crying... Wow, it really awakened me with too much emotion, too much pain. But I told her before I left, "One day, it will pay off." One day we will meet again. I remember closing the door to the front yard and meditating in my heart, you are taking a step first, but your family is still where they are, and you must drag them away.
That was when I was 13 years old and felt trance yesterday. I never thought I could one day play in the Champions League final, do you know how many gifted kids I met growing up who never left that place? When you come from a place like Neuklin, you don't just have to compete with talented players to be at the top, you have to fight ignorance at the same time. When I was a young player in Stuttgart, I never experienced the same direct insults as in Italy. This feeling is more subtle.
Every time you have a few games that don't perform well, all of a sudden the media starts digging into your background. And now they'll make sure they're going to call you what? "Antonio Rudiger, Neuklin from Berlin." Ah, he's too aggressive, his game is too primitive, well, all because he's from Neucklin. But if you're from a particular community, what would they say when you're involved in a fight on the training ground? They say you're a competitor, a leader. What if you're from a completely different neighborhood? You are the gangster people, you are dangerous.
Do you see where this starts? Very subtle, the same personality, but with different labels.
And then when you come to a place like Italy, it goes up to another level. Let me be clear: I love Italy, I love Rome, and people here will kiss and hug you the first time they see you, it's a heart-warming culture. But some people in the media will always play games with you, and those games can become very dangerous.
During my first Roma derby, there was nothing wrong between me and the extreme fans of Lazio, no insults. But before my second Roma derby, I was in an interview with a reporter who asked me about Lazio's head coach, Simeone Inzaghi. I told him, "Oh, I don't know him very well, but I've heard he's doing a good job with this team. I mean I don't know him in private, but this reporter completely distorted my remarks, and he made me say something that sounded like disrespecting Inzaghi.
What he's doing is just adding fuel to the fire of spoofing clicks, which is what happens when the social media machine is up and running, and there's nothing you can do about it. When the game came, I was the target of everyone and everything went crazy. So that's when I'm asked, "Why does all this racist discrimination happen?" Who wants to stir up trouble? I'll laugh at the reasons for the question. Well, let's look at things more deeply and see what's going on on stage.
What happens when people yell during a game? What are the people around them doing? Most of them act as if nothing has happened, and they may even laugh it off, allowing it to develop naturally because they are "innocent people." Let's take it a step further. Even as footballers, we are part of this system. How many times have we had such in-depth conversations in the locker room? To be honest, not too much. It seems like we're all too distracted to really talk about these things in real life. There's always PlayStation, Instagram, luxury cars, and the next game — there's always something that distracts us from having a deep conversation.
Why do such disgusting things? Why say something that makes us sad? There's enough pressure to deal with now. So what will we do to replace it? We made some statements on Instagram, "Let the racism get out of !!!! " Upload, upload, upload. It feels like we've really done something, but it's the equivalent of us not doing anything. Because nothing has changed. It's not my job to understand why things have come to this point, but I know what it's like.
bitter. It is a bitter taste.
You might ask me why I'm making these remarks right now. Well, look at everything I've been through at Chelsea this season. Just four months ago, I was a guy. During that time, if you read about me on the British side, you would get a portrait that didn't match my true personality at all, and I couldn't even say that I was misunderstood because I felt like people didn't know anything about me. My existence is just a name, "Rudiger.".
No matter what the media commented on, I was still me. Things didn't go well, I didn't play a lot of games, so I could easily be a scapegoat. You've definitely read about that, and I'm sure the real reason the guys said I was the coach was fired was that I brought bad atmosphere to the dressing room, and you know what I'm talking about. And the amount of racism I was subjected to on social media during that time was simply breathtaking.
I want to make it clear that I don't think the British media criticizes me because of where I'm from, or because of the color of my skin. But I want people to understand that when this kind of thing happens, there's a situation that I'm going to have, and if you put some effort into it, you're going to see the dark side of human nature, and you're going to understand that as a society, there's a long, long, long way to go.
See how quickly this story changes. Four months ago, the media said I was worthless, Kay wasn't good enough, and Timo wasn't good enough. Never considered that Kay and Timmer had moved to a new country during a pandemic, and didn't care that we were all humans and not machines. None of this matters, in short, we are all useless. Now, four months later, we have reached the Champions League final. Maybe that's a good lesson for everyone. Maybe, but I'm not sure about that. The content of the lesson is that if you want to learn anything, you have to really listen.
But how many people really want to listen? How many people see this tweet (Rudiger shared the article on Twitter, only the headline content) and immediately like it because it makes them feel good? How many people have actually read my text and thought deeply about it? Do you know what's interesting? Sometimes people tell me, "Tony, why do you care so much, these are social media trolls, they're not real people." ”
Ha, please. Over the past few weeks, I've gotten a lot of private messages that say basically the same thing: "Tony, I'm sorry. None of these are robots, they are real people who apologize to me for the terrible insulting words they sent me in January. But ask yourself, why are they doing this? Do you think they see through their own hearts and decide to educate themselves? How long do you think they reflect in front of their own mirror? I don't know, maybe it will, maybe not.
But I know I'm helpful to them when we're winning, and maybe I'm at least a person in their eyes. I have no hatred for these people from the bottom of my heart, but I want to say one thing to them: If your statement is really sincere, you really feel sorry and don't need to tweet me; leave your phone for a few minutes and stop tweeting; educate yourself, read a book about black history, and really open your heart to the experiences of others. It all makes more sense than just tweeting, and it's something we can start putting into practice.
Listen, I'm not naïve. I didn't expect everything to change after one night, and I didn't expect the football world to come together to kill racism like it did in the European Super League. We wouldn't have solved this problem with a single social media campaign, much less with this article. I've lived long enough as a child with a dream, but I don't feel hopeless, and I'll continue to fight — forever. Because until someone out there really cares, until someone really listens to me.
For your sake, I treat you with sincerity; for your sake, I want to play in this Champions League final. You are the ones who have suffered with me, the ones who have accompanied me to weep like rain. Also, according to Allah's will (inshallah, Rudiger is a Muslim), if I do lift the trophy on Saturday night, you will also lift it with the boy from Neuklin.