[A tip of my bloody scalp to The Marmot's Hole for the following.]
A Swiss soccer player named Michel Morganella, upset at his Olympic team's 2-1 loss to South Korea, tweeted the following:
Je défonce tous les Coréens, allez tous vous brûler. Ahahahhahah bande de trisos
Literally translated: "I smash all Koreans, all of you go burn. Ahahahhahah bunch of retards."
I learned a new slang expression: "triso" comes from the noun "trisomie," which is Down Syndrome. The verb "défoncer" (which I did know), meanwhile, means to break up, shatter, destroy, or even gut (eviscerate). As the "dé" in "défoncer" implies, the image is one of something bursting (i.e., not imploding) due to a smashing impact. A somewhat looser but more natural translation of Morganella's tweet might be (preserving his illiterate punctuation):
I kick all Koreans' asses, all of you go burn in hell. Ahahahhahah bunch of retards.
It's unfortunate that this idiot's lack of sportsmanship will now reflect on Switzerland as a whole; it shouldn't, despite Switzerland's xenophobic streak. And since we're talking about xenophobic countries, it's equally legitimate to ask what lessons Korea might have learned from this incident. Morganella was immediately pulled off the team and he issued a public apology; would a Korean who made a racist tweet undergo the same treatment, and would his country feel a measure of shame? One commenter at the Marmot's Hole isn't hopeful:
Will this force Koreans to look inward? The guy got kicked off the team, if it were a Korean player that did this it would depend on how important he was to the team on whether he’d get booted.
Part of me wonders whether the commenter has a point.
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The ruling body for football in Korea is all powerful; I imagine that whether or not a Korean player would get kicked off the team for making the same remarks would likely be influenced in large part by his political connections as well. Judging by some of the decisions that have been made in the past regarding player selection, I wouldn't be surprised if the political concerns were even more important than the player's importance to the team.
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