A gesture of placing both index fingers at the corners of one’s eyes — can it be considered racial discrimination?
According to the Korea Professional Football League, the answer is yes.
On Wednesday, the league’s disciplinary committee ruled that Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors assistant coach Mauricio Taricco committed a racist act and decided to suspend him for five matches and fine him 20 million won ($13,622).
The punishment comes on top of a red-card sanction he had already received.
The incident occurred during second-half stoppage time in the K League 1 Round 36 match between Jeonbuk and Daejeon on Nov. 8. Taricco was first shown a yellow card and then sent off after repeatedly protesting the referee’s failure to call a handball against the opposing team.
After being dismissed, Taricco continued to confront the referee and gestured with both index fingers placed at the corners of his eyes.
The referee interpreted the motion as racist, documented it in his match report and submitted a statement to the disciplinary committee.
In a written statement, Taricco claimed that he had only pointed at his eyes to suggest the referee “did not see the handball.”
However, the committee concluded that the coach’s behavior constituted racist conduct.
It explained that the video footage showed him placing his fingers near the center of his eyes and pulling them outward to narrow them — a gesture widely recognized across cultures as mocking toward Asians.
It also noted that FIFA has issued multiple sanctions for the same gesture in the past.
The committee further emphasized that actions should be evaluated not by a person’s stated intent but by how they are commonly understood. By that standard, it said, the gesture clearly matched the widely known “slant-eye” racist motion.
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