The greatest female volleyball player in Italy at the moment, Paola Egonu, co-hosted the world-famous music festival and once again raised her voice on the topic of racism in the country where she was born and lived her whole life.
Egonu sparked controversy during the Sanremo Music Festival 2023 in Italy with her monologue on the third evening of the annual television song contest, which will determine the Italian representative at Eurovision 2023, the most important musical song contest in Europe. The biggest star of Italian women’s volleyball didn’t beat around the bush while on stage, talking about the problem of racism and inclusion in the country. But the player of Nigerian origin sparked political controversy with her speech in the press conference that preceded her co-hosting of Sanremo.
“Italy is a racist country, but it’s improving. I don’t want to play the role of the victim, but simply say how things are,” the opposite hitter said, stressing that she didn’t want to make it a political issue.
“Did I say that I wouldn’t live in Italy with the Meloni (Giorgia Meloni, a right-wing populist and the newly elected prime minister of Italy) government? I don’t remember saying that,” she said, referring to a recent interview with Vanity Fair in which she expressed dissatisfaction with Meloni’s election as head of the Italian government due to her political views.
Egonu added that for now, her competitive commitment is in Turkey and that she hasn’t closed the doors to the Italy National Team, which she left at the end of the 2022 FIVB World Championship because the insults from Italian fans during the matches and on social media had become unsustainable: “I’m processing, but if there were to be the possibility, yes”.
