'There's not enough being done' - USMNT star Yunus Musah opens up on 'intense' moment AC Milan left the pitch after Mike Maignan was racially abused by Udinese fans

On January 20, Maignan was the victim of racial abuse from Udinese supporters behind his net. The fans were making 'monkey chants' at the French international, and after he alerted the officials, the Rossoneri came together and walked off the pitch. Now, the U.S. international has opened up on the incident.

Speaking to CNN in an exclusive interview, Musah revealed how truly personal the event was to him.

“We’re used to obviously having away fans and them not liking you and stuff, but when it becomes personal, racial, it really affects you deep down,” Musah said. “All of a sudden we saw that our goalkeeper, Mike, was coming across, telling the referee that there were some people making monkey chants and just being abusive to him behind the goal,” he recalled. “Obviously, we’re in an away stadium as well, so the majority of fans from the other team – it was very intense for Mike to be receiving all that abuse from so many fans... So it was really, really important that when we saw that, the whole team reacted great. We all stuck by our friend.... We’re people before athletes and we just forgot about the game and focused on our friend.”

For Musah, he's faced a similar moment before, when his Valencia side's fans racially abused Real Madrid's Vinicius Junior in May, 2023.

“It felt like a déjà vu moment,” said Musah. “We’ve seen it before – it was like, ‘Here we go again.’ The situation, I’ve seen it before; it is very ugly.”

When the Rossoneri walked off the pitch, it was a team effort, and everyone was behind Maignan in that moment.

“I feel like it’s a good thing to do because then fans, or people that were behaving that way and made Mike walk off the field, realize that they’re affecting the outcome of the game by being like that,” he explains. “And maybe it would stop them doing it because they’ll know that, if they do that, the match is going to be suspended.”

Going forward, though, Musah argues more needs to be done about racism in the game.

“The standard thing is that people would post about on social media, the federations and clubs will ask us to make messages about racism, to send it to people and then in two or three weeks’ time, it dies out and we forget about it,” said Musah. “And then, obviously, it happens again. So that’s why players feel like there’s not enough being done.”

“I feel like the ultimate message is just to teach and to educate people on the gravity of this. Not just: ‘You’re being racial’ or ‘you’re being offensive…’ You’ve got to treat each other with respect. Ultimately, at the end of the day – we’re all human beings,” he said. “We’ll be in a better place if we all respect each other and treat each other equally.”

Racism in the professional game has been a plague for years, and despite movements and petitions to try and fix it, no change has truly arrived. Real Madrid superstar Vinicius Junior has been a victim of abuse numerous times while playing La Liga, with no true fix to the issue yet, including a recent incident in just October of 2023. In Serie A, the same league where the incident with Maignan occurred, Belgian international Romelu Lukaku has gone on the record about being subjected to 'monkey chants' while playing for Inter Milan, stating a simple message: "F*ck racism."

GOAL.Com's Mark Doyle argues that after the recent incident with Maignan, FIFA President Gianni Infantino needs to put the hammer down on racism in the game, claiming that teams should be forced to forfeit a match if their fans racially abuse anyone on the pitch.

The Rossoneri return to the pitch Saturday against Bologna. However, the hope is that going forward, the stance they made in their previous contest against Udinese will be the minimum standard as Serie A looks to take the axe down on Racism.