Dear management of "NTV Plus" Russia!

Just like many other Russian fans of soccer in general and Serie A in particular, I am a subscribed to your broadcasting services.

We pretty much appreciate the quality of the broadcasting covered by you, but there are things which are impossible to pass by and which are very impossible to close eyes to, i.e. the professionalism and the personal level of one f your commentators - Alexey Andronov in particular.

We do understand that outside of being a commentator, he has the right for his own opinion, for private life and for his addictions (and we all know that Andronov is the great fan of "Borussia D." and the whole Bundesliga); so we understand that he may be prejudicial in his judgments and, knowing the level of his professionalism, we may treat his public assumptions as such – i.e. as totally biased and prejudicial. But at the same there is a line which a public figure and commentator of one of the European largest operators (NTV Plus) should never cross.

During the last game between Borussia D. and Juventus teams within 1/8 of Champions League finals, Alexey Andronov in a rush of emotions did not keep his temper and showed the real face as he seeded a number of statements on his "twitter" account; those statements are far beyond a foul line, and one of them totally crosses all admissible limits for a public figure and professional commentator (who happens to be the face of "NTV Plus").

Andronov publically let out excessively emotional rhetoric to one of the Juventus players – Arturo Vidal, which happens to be the citizen of Chile and the player of national team: "What does this Chilean scum do?...”.  In this specific case your employee, commentator and public figure dared not only to offend the player of one of the most admired football clubs in Russia and CIS (and most of this club's fans are also your paid subscribers), but also made it with racist rhetoric. We think such direct insult of a player from the popular and public commentator is inadmissible and unacceptable, especially given the obviously racist character of such statement. Also, as the professional linguist, I am convinced that the phrase "Chilean scum" promotes international and interracial hostility in this context and is humiliating to the extreme degree! Replace the "Chilean" adjective in this combination to "Russian", "Chechen", "Belarusian", "Ukrainian" - and you will understand how extremely low and racist it sounds.

This is not the first case when Mr. Andronov has been biased towards Arturo Vidal or any other rival of his favorite German teams. Two years ago, during the CL match between Juventus and Bayern (he was a commentator on that match with NTV Plus) Andronov also has been very biased and prejudiced towards the game of Chilean halfback (and the whole Juventus team): when Bayern players tackled him from behind with straight legs "he had that coming", where he hit them back (but not from behind and not that dangerously) - " foul game, he better change the career, can’t do that in soccer"… Even though such prejudicial and biased attitude by the commentator is unacceptable, we kept silent and never paid attention cause we got used to low standards of some of your commenters. But today Alexey Andronov on his twitter publicly seeded racist and extremely humiliating statement and sharp personal insults. This all happened because he feels entitled and believes he would not get punished for such illegal behavior.

We ask you to consider this case from the perspective of racist offense, violation of journalistic ethics by the commentator Andronov, promotion of interracial hostility, and, considering his status with your company, from the perspective of undermining image and "goodwill" of your company and the whole "NTV Plus" brand. We also inform you that this petition shall be translated into English so that English-speaking football fans and community could also see the level of one of the reporters of Russian "NTV Plus". We, the progressive humanity, say no to racism in football, and we say no to racists and biased commentators like Alexey Andronov!

P.S. This petition shall be duplicated into English, and the link will be distributed in all English speaking football forums.