Dani Alves Banana Thrower Is Villareal Youth Coach, Arrested By Police
When a man — who has been identified as a Villareal coach — decided to throw a banana at Dani Alves this past weekend, he probably didn’t imagine that the act would become a social media frenzy.
The racial insult, was picked up by the likes of Twitter because of Alves’ way of handling the whole situation. Instead of getting upset and throwing a fit, the Barcelona defender calmly picked up the banana, pulled back the peel, and ate it.
With that Alves didn’t only shame his attacker, but started a trend that keeps going on days after the media and online sites ran with it and many well known names are showing their support for the Brazilian player.
BRILLIANT: Even more football players unite to show their support for Dani Alves. #NoToRacism pic.twitter.com/XLKMiJAyd2
— BBC Sporf (@BBCSporf) April 29, 2014
The man who threw the banana at Dani Alves was identified. His name is David Barelles, he was arrested by the police pic.twitter.com/hk08PBpTGj
— BarçaSnacks (@BarcaSnacks) April 30, 2014
The man that threw the now infamous banana at Alves has been identified as 26-year-old David Campayo Lleo, a youth division assistant coach at Villareal, according to media reports.
Police arrested the culprit — who has been reportedly fired by the Spanish club — and Villareal has allegedly banned him from El Madrigal Stadium for life, not only that, the banana thrower could face up to three-years in prison for his actions against Alves, if found guilty of charges of racist provocation.
Now, as good as all this is, Dani Alves’ actions were not a spur of the moment thing, but part of a pre-planned anti-racism campaign, which came about following another Brazilian player, Neymar’s racial attacks in March.
REPORT: @DaniAlvesD2 banana stunt was planned long before the Villareal game for anti-racism: http://t.co/OBAxCecuLi pic.twitter.com/3U1EKveLBU
— LiveSoccerTV.com (@LiveSoccerTV) April 30, 2014
It has been long-known that La Liga is not the most tolerant and following Neymar’s incident a group of European marketing firms were brought on board to develop awareness of the disturbing trend that has plagued the Spanish league for years.
The banana thrower was not in on the deal Dani Alves and Neymar had made. Both Brazilian players had decided that if an incident occurred either one would eat the banana making sure cameras caught the moment and it worked.
Now all people are talking about is Alves eating the banana that was thrown at him at Villareal and many big names in football have joined in supporting the anti-racism campaign.
Are you disappointed to learn that Dani Alves eating the banana thrown at him was planned?
[Image via Twitter]
