Politicians from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to players, including Alves’ compatriot and team-mate Neymar, scurried to their computers to condemn the incident on social media and praise Alves for his response — he simply picked up and ate the discarded fruit.
English Premier League stars including Sergio Aguero, David Luiz, Bacary Sagna, Yaya Toure, Luis Suarez, Phillipe Cotinho, Sergio Aguero, Fernandinho, Oscar, Willian, Nacer Chadli and Moussa Dembele following his reaction to a banana being thrown in his direction by a Villarreal supporter during a La Liga game on Sunday.
Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi and the national team coach Cesare Prandelli shared a banana in solidarity for Alves.
His father, Domingos Alves, 64, meanwhile came up with a cool response of his own.
“I plant mangos, coconuts, melons, watermelons, passion fruit — and now I’m going to plant bananas,” he told Globo’s G1 news portal from his home in the northern state of Bahia.
But he added a note of caution, saying he feared one day a racist fan might go as far as trying to poison a player.
And he added he would be telling his son “not to eat any more bananas on the pitch.”
Alves’ mother Lucia Ribeiro added she was proud of her son’s reaction, which she said was “a slap in the face for prejudice.”
Alves himself joked on Twitter that “my father always told me to eat bananas to avoid getting cramp.”
The player’s smart response to the latest in a series of racist incidents at Spanish matches rallied fellow athletes, with dozens posting pictures of themselves on social media chomping bananas.
Rousseff and FIFA president Sepp Blatter added supportive messages of their own while condemning racism.
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