Pa Dembo Tourray

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Pa Dembo Tourray, pronounced "Touré", (born March 31, 1981 in Banjul) is a Gambian football goalkeeper. He started his career in Real Banjul, but moved to Sweden to play for Djurgården and Assyriska. He spent one half of the 2004 season on loan to Vålerenga in Norway, but returned to Djurgården as they sold Swedish international goalkeeper Andreas Isaksson. Tourray has been capped 15 times for Gambia.

In 2004 he was the subject of BBC news stories as football fans pelted him with bananas in one of the Stockholm Derbys[1]. On a later occasion the pelting occurred again, only this time he responded by eating the bananas. Tourray was reported as saying "I suddenly thought that if you throw a banana at me, I'm going to eat it". [2]

This act of throwing bananas at Tourray was misinterpreted by many as a racist act, when in fact it has been a long derby tradition for the opposing teams fans to throw bananas at Djurgården's goalkeepers. This has its origin in the very name of Djurgården, meaning "The animal yard" after the island in Stockholm where the royal family use to keep their animals. In addition, in colloquial Swedish the goal is often referred to as "the cage" (Swedish: Buren), through this the goalkeeper is often called "the animal in the cage" and therby mocked with banana throwing.

Because of heavy racial tensions in southern Europe this act was much looked into by FIFA as well as by The Swedish Football Association (SvFF)

[edit] External reference

(Swedish) Club bio

Djurgårdens IF Fotboll - Current Squad
2 Concha \| 3 Stoltz \| 4 Boskailo \| 5 Ottesen \| 6 Kuivasto \| 7 Arneng \| 8 Tauer \| 9 Kusi-Asare \| 10 Nazaré \| 11 Sjölund \| 12 Jonson \| 14 Ceesay \| 15 Tourray \| 16 Johannesson \| 17 Batan \| 18 Dahlberg \| 19 Thiago \| 20 Karlsson \| 21 Junegard \| 22 Komac \| 23 Davids \| 25 Amoah \| 26 Kozica \| 30 Wahlström \| Manager: Jónsson