GEORGINIO WIJNALDUM is ready to lead Holland off the pitch if they suffer racist abuse in Budapest.
Uefa is investigating claims that Hungarian fans aimed offensive noises at French players last weekend and displayed homophobic banners.
Holland face the Czech Republic in the city on Sunday for a place in the quarter-finals, with captain Wijnaldum also slamming European football’s governing body for not doing enough to combat racism.
He said: “You could lose a game because of those kinds of slurs. In this case Uefa should be there to protect the players and they should make the decision.
“Players often get punished for protecting themselves so Uefa needs to take a lead role in this.
“They should be the ones to say ‘if this sort of thing happens we will cancel the game and stop playing’.
“It is not acceptable and we don’t want it. When it happened in the beginning and I started thinking about it. I think different things.
“I started to think ‘would I walk off the pitch?’ — which I might, actually.
It could be the case that I will walk off the pitch but I will speak with the players about it first.
“If such a thing happens and the referee stops the game, the players of the opposing team say ‘we are not going to take this’ and they walk off the pitch then you would feel a lot better as a player and it would make a greater statement rather than to do it alone.”
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Uefa is probing accusations that fans in Budapest’s atmospheric Puskas Arena made monkey noises aimed at France striker Kylian Mbappe and some of his team-mates.
Hungary is the only country allowing capacity crowds and its outspoken PM Viktor Orban has controversial views.
Germany were denied a request to light Munich’s Allianz Arena in rainbow colours for their home match against Hungary to show opposition to a new law in the latter country, which critics say targets the LGBT community.
New Paris Saint-Germain signing Wijnaldum will wear a rainbow coloured ‘One Love’ armband for the game on Sunday to promote ‘unity’ instead of division through football.
The former Liverpool midfielder is unsure how he will react if he does hear racist chanting.
He said: “I would love for it not to be like this. I would prefer to just play football and if other people solve the problems, fine.
“But we have a platform and people tend to listen to us more than others. That is good in these situations.
“At such a moment you just get a certain feeling and you start to react to that feeling. But I have never experienced such a thing and I hope never to.
“It is a great responsibility which rests on the player, which is why I think Uefa should act in such situations to protect the players.
“It is then a lot easier for the player himself and the feeling the players gets is a lot better in such a case.
“So far a couple of players have done it but if you ask them whether they felt supported by the people around them they will say they didn’t feel that much support.”
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
