Pepe and Carlo Ancelotti both seemed highly amused; the official trying to remove the offending banner did not.
A Champions League press conference isn’t the first place you’d expect to see a Greenpeace protest, but the environmental campaigners staged a particularly ingenious one at a press conference ahead of Real Madrid’s clash with Copenhagen in Denmark tomorrow night.
Greenpeace have made their feelings about Champions League sponsors Gazprom – a Russian based gas supplier – clear in the past, including during a clash between Schalke and FC Basel earlier this season, and were at it again today in an effort to demonstrate their opposition to Gazprom’s plans to drill for oil in the Arctic.
The method of today’s protest was entirely peaceful and done in a way to ensure maximum exposure as, using a remote control, they managed to unveil a poster in opposition to Gazprom behind Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti and Real centre back Pepe, both of whom were highly amused by what was going on – literally, not metaphorically – behind their backs.
While angering one sponsor, they also aided another, possibly unwittingly, with reference in the video to the well-known Mastercard slogan when outlining how they went about pulling the protest off, which, you would imagine, is likely to inspire plenty of imitations in the near future.
Hat-tip: James Dart
