Football stars including Luis Suarez and Neymar show support for Dani Alves by eating bananas
Social media abuzz as Suarez, Neymar and others post banana-munching pictures in support of Alves
Dani Alves has started a social media storm against racism in football — simply by eating a banana.
Footballers and other celebrities from across the globe have tweeted, Facebooked and Instagramed their support after the Barcelona star picked up a banana thrown by a racist fan and ate it in a match against Villarreal on Sunday.
Stars including Luis Suarez and Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool, Mario Ballotelli from AC Milan, Sergio Aguero, Neymar, Hulk and several more posted pictures of themselves eating the yellow fruit.
The hashtags #bananaselfies and #weareallmonkeys were soon trending across all social media platforms.
Even politicians became involved, with the Italy Prime Minister Matteo Rezzi and Italy manager Cesare Pandrelli picture sharing a bite of a banana.
Alves said after the incident that he had experienced racism for the whole of his 11 years of playing in Spain and the best response was to ‘laugh at these backward people’.
Even he probably didn’t realise the impact his spur of the moment reaction could have.
Watch a video of Alves eating the banana here:
