Monday, April 5, 2010

Goal.com apologises to Romanians for racist blunder


The well-known sports website Goal.com has apologised today (Mon) to Romanians after using a racist term referring to the team Rapid Bucharest.The blunder has been highly criticised by the Romanian sports press, which spotted the Rapid Bucharest team was named "Ciorile vopsite", which means "the painted crows", which is a racist name used for gipsies, called by other team's supporters against the Rapid team.

The article referred to the recent appointment of Ioan Andone as Rapid coach.

The later edit of the article reads:
"Note: An earlier version of this article contained what Goal.com now realises is an ethnic slur. Goal.com utterly rejects all forms of racism and ethnic discrimination and apologies deeply and sincerely to readers in Romania and elsewhere for our accidental use of an unacceptable phrase."

The blunder was also pointed out by readers in tens of comments: "Priceless! The ciorile vopsite :))", "Mr. Robin, I'm not a Rapid fan, but I have to tell you that there are "ciori vopsite" all over Romania and a team like Steaua Bucharest , Dinamo Bucharest but other teams too have among their fans a higher percentage of "ciori vopsite" than Rapid Bucharest. Anyway , the word "cioara" is a nasty nickname by which gipsy are called and you may be in big trouble if any of them (romanian or not) intends to sue you in the court of law. If I were you, I'd just ERASE these two words from the article."

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