The organisation that has given its name to the Friends Arena in Stockholm has expressed its dismay that Cristiano Ronaldo has been invited to play there with Juventus in August.
The Portuguese forward has been accused of rape by Kathryn Mayorga, who says she was sexually assaulted in 2009, and last October Las Vegas police reopened the investigation into the claim. Ronaldo has protested his innocence throughout, saying the sex was consensual.
This week it was announced that Juventus are set to face Atlético Madrid in the ICC Cup in Stockholm on 10 August, which led to Friends, an anti-bullying organisation which was given the naming rights to the Swedish national stadium in 2012, expressing its unhappiness.
“We are extremely unhappy that Friends is being linked with accusations of such a serious crime,” Lovisa Lönnebo, communications officer at Friends, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. “Sexual crimes and sexual abuse is something we at Friends are working actively against all the time and we have done that for a long time. We can’t decide what happens in the stadium but we are extremely unhappy about being linked with this.”
Friends said it is contacting ICC this week to let the organisation know its strong feelings on the matter. “We will make it clear to them how problematic it is for us, with the values we have, to be linked with these kind of accusations,” Lönnebo added. “They are a massive organisation and they probably don’t know about us but we think it is really important to make our feelings clear and make a stand.”
Stockholm Live, which is in charge of the running of the stadium, told Aftonbladet: “ICC is a big and sincere organiser that we are letting the stadium to and it is a big international tournament with 18 games being played in several countries. Which teams and games they place in the different countries is not something we know about in advance or something we can influence or comment on.”