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Dries Mertens Supports Dani Alves, Is Awesome

In case you needed more reasons to love the Belgian attacker, he's given us a great one.

In case you missed it yesterday, something kinda cool happened in the Barcelona match. Dani Alves was lining up to take a corner when some racist jerkbag threw a banana at him. Without missing a beat, Alves picked it up, peeled it, and ate it.

It was a brilliantly casual response to a hateful act, and there's been some amazing support for him from all corners of the footballing world. In yet another example of why he's awesome, Napoli's Dries Mertens got in on the act:

Rock on, Dries. Rock on.

I would get in to why Alves' action (and the awesome response to it) is so fantastic and why racism in football (and, well, the world) is so awful, but I'm pretty sure at this point that everyone reading this understands why. I'm just glad to see such a wonderful reaction to what happened yesterday.

Hopefully this isn't a discussion that we as a society need to have any more sooner rather than later, but sadly there will always be bigoted jerks around. Actions like this are a great way to minimize and even dismiss their voice, though, and we need to see more of it.