AUBA: IT HURTS

PIERRE-EMERICK Aubameyang says the level of racial abuse around the game is ‘really painful’ for black players. The Arsenal striker had a banana skin thrown at him from the Spurs end while celebrating a goal during December’s north London derby at the Emirates, England players were racially abused in Montenegro during a recent Euro 2020 qualifier and Chelsea fans were caught singing songs about Liverpool’s African striker Mo Salah being a ‘bomber’ this week. And yesterday a video emerged of an Arsenal fan racially abusing Napoli defender Kalidou Koulibaly during Thursday’s Europa League match. Speaking before the video of

Koulibaly emerged, Aubameyang admitted the issue rearing its head hurts him. He said: ‘I am really disappointed. I had the same problem here. When you are black like me it is painful, because we are in 2019 and it is not good for football in England.’ The culprit in the Koulibaly video can be heard using the ‘n-word’ in a Snapchat post taken during the match when referring to the defender. The word also appears on screen during the short clip. Arsenal said in a statement: ‘We utterly condemn use of this type of racist language and have launched an investigation to identify the culprit.’