Liverpool star Gini Wijnaldum wants to set a trend for players walking off if they ever face racist abuse.
“It really hit me on a personal level,” Wijnaldum told reporters on Monday ahead of Netherlands’ final Euro 2020 qualifier against Estonia in Amsterdam.
“I never expected anything like this to happen in the Netherlands. I’m really shocked. It did happen, unfortunately, and the way people have talked about the incident really hurt me.
“It’s a problem in society. As a player, you can’t really change anything about it. But I still think that players should try and support each other. It’s a problem in society and a problem that should be solved by our politicians.
“I hope that there will be severe punishments. This really can’t happen again. It’s not just the racism to the player from Excelsior, but I also saw someone doing the Nazi salute in the stands. When I saw that, I thought, ‘What is wrong with you if you do something like that?’.
“Our ancestors fought for us so we can live freely. If people still perform the Nazi salute, that’s utterly disrespectful. That just can’t happen. We can’t allow that in the Netherlands. That’s what I think. There have to be severe punishments.
“I think the KNVB did well with their statement, saying that they will look into the matter and see what happened. But I think it’s really despicable what Den Bosch did. I might not be allowed to say things like that, but I don’t care anymore.
“I think we need to see very high fines. I heard that they want to install cameras to find out who the culprits are. The punishments need to be so severe that nobody even thinks of doing something like this ever again. We want to play football to enjoy ourselves, we want to entertain our supporters. We don’t want to see things like this happening.”
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