It has been one of the major social media trends of the week, with the humble banana transformed into a symbol of the anti-racism in football movement following Dani Alves show of defiance in eating a banana thrown at him in Spain last weekend.
In support, Neymar would tweet a picture of him and his son eating the fruit with the hashtag #weareallmonkeys; in what has since emerged was a pre-planned campaign by the pair in order to highlight the examples of racism they suffer in La Liga.
The campaign has taken off and players from around the world have added weight to the cause, posting pictures of themselves with a banana in solidarity with Alves. Even the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has lent her support to the cause.
Just a few days on and the campaign has hit China, courtesy of Hangzhou Greentown’s Brazilian striker Anselmo Ramon. The former Cruzeiro man fired his second brace in the past two weeks to help his side to a 2-0 victory over Tianjin Teda on Wednesday night and, to celebrate one of his goals, he began to eat a banana.
Ramon is not alone, though, in representing the Chinese Super League in the campaign, with Shanghai East Asia’s Iban Cuadrado also posting a picture of himself to back the campaign that began in his homeland.
#CSL player @ibancuadrado backs Alves in the banana #NoToRacism campaign, top guy! pic.twitter.com/R6izEqF7u5
— Peter Davis (@peteydavis) April 29, 2014
