Gracia: "We are very sad about this situation and we wish to take the opportunity to condemn racism"

Valencia CF coach Javi Gracia reacted to the 2-1 loss to Cadiz CF, as well as the racial incident that marred the Matchday 29 encounter.

Strong condemnation of racism

"The incident happened in the first half. Diakhaby was really upset and we learned that he had been seriously racially insulted. He was quite agitated. When he told us about the insult, we told the referee that we did not agree (with that being said) and that we were withdrawing from the game. In the dressing room we were told that we would receive a sanction if we did not return to the pitch, and so we spoke with Diakhaby about how he felt. He told us that he did not feel that he could play, but that he understood that we should continue playing because of the possible sanction, and so we went back out with the intention of winning -with one more reason to fight for it. The referee was not aware of what had happened and had not heard anything. Faced with this situation, he was forced to make the game continue. We are very sad about this situation and we wish to take the opportunity to condemn racism."

Diakhaby's request that the team finish the match

"I was trying to make the referee see that, without knowing what had happened, he had shown a yellow card to Diakhaby. What is really important is the origin of the situation, and that we have to eliminate these kinds of things from football. We were told that we could be punished. At that time, many things were discussed. We tried to use serenity and  comment on the matter with Diakhaby, and the player said that he understood perfectly that we should continue playing, due to the risk of a sanction. He was in no condition to continue playing and we told him that we fully supported him.
I told the fourth official that, during what happened, we protected the attacked player so that more damage would not be caused, and that we did not understand that the player who caused the problem was still allowed on the pitch.

What worried me the most was the state of my player. If he had told us that he did not think we should play, we would not have played -at the risk of whatever would have happened. When he said to go back out, I was forced to make the decision to continue playing. We returned with Diakhaby's shirt on the bench and with the intention of dedicating the victory to him."

Match analysis

"We anticipated that the match could be like this, with territorial dominance, a high amount of corners and shots on goal. There was enough dominance for us to have generated more clear chances and more goals, but we weren't able to score more. We came close, but we didn't score the second. On a move in which we showed defensive weakness, we gave them time to bring down a long ball and cross in, scoring from that. It is worrying because it shows that in this type of game, in which we probably deserved to win, we didn't manage to."