Rodrigo De Paul has condemned Chelsea players for “unfollowing” Enzo Fernandez after he posted a video of Argentina’s players singing a racist song following their Copa America victory.
Both Chelsea and FIFA are investigating after Fernandez recorded his Argentina teammates on Instagram Live singing a racist song about France’s players on the team bus after defeating Colombia in the Copa America final.
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In Fernandez’s broadcast, Argentina’s players can be heard singing the first two lines of the song, ‘on passport, French nationality, listen, spread the word, they play in France, but they are all…’, before someone says, ‘cut the video’.
The racist and transphobic chant, first sung by Argentina supporters during the 2022 World Cup, claims France’s players are ‘all from Angola’ and references a reported relationship between Kylian Mbappe and transgender model Ines Rau.
The complete lyrics to the song are: ‘Listen, spread the word, they play in France, but they are all from Angola, they are going to run well, they like to sleep with trans people, their mum is Nigerian, their dad is Cameroonian, but on the passport it says: French.’
Fernandez has several black French teammates at Chelsea, including Benoit Badiashile, Axel Disasi, Wesley Fofana, Malo Gusto, Christopher Nkunku, and Lesley Ugochukwu.
On Tuesday evening, Fofana posted the video on X with the caption: ‘Football in 2024: uninhibited racism.’
Fofana, Gusto, and Disasi have also unfollowed Fernandez on Instagram.
However, Atletico Madrid’s De Paul, who plays with Fernandez on Argentina’s national team, has defended Fernandez, calling Chelsea players’ reaction ‘strange’.
‘What happens with this song is that one doesn’t analyse it from the pitch, it’s seen more as a joke,’ De Paul said in an interview with Migue Granados on OLGA.
‘Then I can understand people who have suffered racism and don’t like it.
‘I think there are ways… if someone, or some of Enzo’s teammates, feels offended, they should call him, not expose him on social media.
‘There’s a bit of malice there or a desire to put Enzo in a position that has nothing to do with him.
‘It’s very strange, it’s like kicking a fallen tree. You call him and say, “dude, what happened?”.
‘If you have a relationship… these are people you’re with in the dressing room all the time, unfollowing him seems pointless to me.
‘You call him and say, “listen, I think we might feel affected by this, why don’t you post a message apologising to the people”, and the subject ends there. Don’t make such a show of it.
‘What I can say in defence of Enzo is that, obviously, the song is there because it was there, because people sing it.’
