Alejandro Garnacho could face disciplinary action over a social media post in which he used gorilla emojis over a picture of Andre Onana’s penalty save on Tuesday night.
The 19-year-old put two gorilla emojis on to the post of a picture of Onana and his Manchester United teammates celebrating his penalty save from FC Copenhagen forward Jordan Larsson, which turned out to be the last kick of the game.
Garnacho deleted the post once he was advised of the potential racial connotations involved, but the Football Association is aware of it and could yet charge the winger with a breach of their guidelines around racially sensitive social media posts.
United have already fallen foul of those rules, with Edinson Cavani banned for three games in 2020 after he wrote ‘Gracias Negrito’ to a friend who had congratulated him for scoring a goal on his Instagram story. Cavani also deleted the post and said the message “was intended as an affectionate greeting to a friend” as part of an apology.
But he was still hit with an FA charge and as well as a three-game ban he was fined £100,000 and told to complete face-to-face education around the issue. It was deemed that his post was insulting, abusive, improper and brought the game into disrepute and the FA said it was an “aggravated breach” because it “included reference, whether express or implied, to colour and/or race and/or ethnic origin”.
Mendy replied to the post with laughing emojis and Bernardo did delete it, but it wasn’t enough to prevent an FA charge and a one-game ban.
