France midfielder Ousmane Dembele, caught in racism storm, apologises

France midfielder Ousmane Dembele, on Monday, apologised after a video emerged on social media of him appearing to taunt Asian hotel employees. The supposed incident happened when Barcelona was touring Japan.

The 42-second clip, in which Dembele appeared to have made on Snapchat in 2019, was widely shared on social media platforms.

Dembele, who is recovering from surgery after injuring his knee in France’s second group game at Euro 2021, said he regretted the incident.

“Recently a private video dating from 2019 has been circulating on social media. As it happens it is in Japan — it could have been anywhere on the planet and I would have used the same expressions. I wasn’t targeting any community,” the 24-year-old said on Instagram.

The clip shows Dembele, on Barca’s preseason tour in July 2019, talking to team-mate Antoine Griezmann who is waiting for local technicians to hook up a game console to a television in their hotel room.

“All these ugly faces, just so you can play PES (Pro Evolution Soccer), aren’t you ashamed?” Dembele said in the report.

He then appears to mock the Japanese language before asking: “are you advanced in your country or not?”

“The video has now gone public — I understand how it could have impacted the people present in those images and as such I offer them my sincere apologies.”

The video first appeared on a YouTube account with only a handful of subscribers but was then picked up on Twitter where it received more than 6,000 retweets under the hashtag #StopAsianHate.

Antoine Griezmann, who was also involved in a row for appearing wearing blackface and dressed as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters for a party, maintained that he had always opposed “all forms of discrimination”.

“I am sorry if I offended my Japanese friends,” AFP quoted Griezmann as saying.