"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that:" Martin Luther King Jr.
In the 16th minute of AC Milan's home game against Bologna, the match was halted for a few moments to display that quote on San Siro's giant screen. Everyone stopped, fans took their mobiles out, flashlights on, and waved it in the air. Light driving out darkness... A week after goalkeeper Mike Maignan (who wears #16) was racially abused at Udinese, after he'd temporarily walked off the ground, this was Milan speaking up.
In 2019, when Moise Kean had been abused, his then captain Leonardo Bonucci had said Kean was partly to blame for it. In 2023, when Maignan walked off after being abused, his teammates - all of them - came to hug him and walk off with him. The benchmark may be abysmally low, but as a club, Milan have cleared that. Maignan not cowering to abuse was, in a very obvious way, important: it showed others that they don't need to silently take it and go on, as they once had to. But Milan having his back was equally important: it showed that there are people in power who will have the back of those who decide to fight back.
For this is far beyond the confines of just a sport.
Immediately after the incident at Udinese, those in power apologized to Maignan. The Italian sports minister posted on X/Twitter: "Our apologies to Mike Maignan." The mayor of Udine said it didn't reflect the spirit of the people of the region. The Italian football federation boss said what these federation bosses always seem to say: "there's no room in football for racism". Maignan, though, was having none of this "in football" business. "It's not the player who was attacked," he wrote on Instagram. "It's the man."
That's an important distinction that many observers continue to miss, inexplicably - Maignan was not abused because he was playing for a rival, not because he'd stopped their team from scoring, not because he'd taunted them. He was abused because he was a black man.
"It's not the first time this has happened to me. And I am not the first person it has happened to," he wrote. "We have had statements, publicity campaigns, protocols and nothing has changed. Today, there's a whole system that needs to take responsibility."
In asking for responsibility, Maignan also questioned Udinese "who only spoke of an interruption to the match," and he also questioned those Udinese fans in the stadium who had been quiet while those who abused him crossed line after line. Silence, after all, is complicity. This simple gesture was AC Milan publicly saying that they were taking responsibility to lead the fightback. That as a club, they would not stay silent.
Action speaks louder than words#StandUpToAllHate #MilanBologna pic.twitter.com/vpF3NrXOd6
- AC Milan (@acmilan) January 27, 2024
Milan could have put out the quote in its entirety, for it's a beautiful one. "Hate cannot drive out hate," Dr King had continued to say. "Only love can do that". It's this part of the quote that Maignan, and any right-minded observer must cling on to.
In the solidarity provided by Milan, by the fans at San Siro, there is hope. If even one child walking home asks his father why the match was stopped, what the quote meant, who Martin Luther King Jr. is and if that child is then convinced of the essential truth of what Maignan is standing up for, what Dr. King stood up for... that's a win. And in this fight that sport cannot fight on its own, every such win must be celebrated.
You could call it naïve, but isn't all hope just that?
For encouraging Maignan to not back down, and for doing the plainly decent thing and having his back, for not keeping "politics" out of sport, AC Milan take our moment of the week.