The Juventus F.C. Women team has been called out after the official Twitter account shared with its 111K followers a photograph of one of its players making a racist gesture. Swiftly after deleting it, the club apologized that “our tweet, which was not meant to cause controversy or have any racial undertones, may have offended anyone.”
The tweet in question—pictured below—appeared Thursday and was up for approximately 30 minutes before it was removed. The Juventus player had her fingers pulling the edges of her eyes with a cone on her head, portraying an outdated, harmful, and deeply offensive Asian stereotype; the team replicated this via emojis as well.
The Juventus F.C. Women’s tweet was quickly met with criticism by users, many of whom questioned how anyone thought this was a good idea.
Not long after, the Twitter account for the team apologized in a statement.
“We sincerely apologise that our tweet, which was not meant to cause controversy or have any racial undertones, may have offended anyone,” reads the post. “Juventus has always been against racism and discrimination. #DifferencesMakeTheDifference.”
Check out what Twitter had to say about the Juventus account’s racist tweet below.
