Chelsea went public for the first time on Tuesday with detailed racial abuse allegations against a referee, insisting there was no misunderstanding and that their players heard Mark Clattenburg use the word “monkey” during a Premier League match.
Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck opted to end the club’s public silence on the claims despite an ongoing investigation by the Football Association (FA) into the events during last month’s match against Manchester United.
However, Clattenburg is no longer being investigated by police because of a lack of evidence. The probe was sparked by the Society of Black Lawyers complaining based on media reports, but neither Chelsea nor their players approached the Metropolitan Police.
Photo: AFP
“Inquires were made and no victims have come forward ... without a victim and/or any evidence that any offense has been committed, the matter cannot currently be investigated,” the police force said in a statement.
European champions Chelsea have been criticized for lodging a complaint with the FA while still backing captain John Terry, who has just served a four-match ban for racially abusing an opponent.
However, Buck said in an interview with the London Evening Standard that Chelsea had a duty to report the allegations after black midfielders John Obi Mikel and Ramires said they heard the offending word.
“Suppose we had tried to sweep this under the rug and said to the various players: ‘Look, it’s not a big deal and the press are going to be all over us, maybe you want to reconsider,’” Buck was quoted as saying in Tuesday’s edition of the newspaper. “If that had leaked out, we would’ve really been crucified.”
Buck is sure the allegations are not baseless, amid suggestions the players might have misheard Clattenburg, who is yet to publicly respond to the allegations.
“I spoke to the players involved, either because they were allegedly the recipient of that abuse or had heard it, three separate times,” the American lawyer said. “I asked them if they could be mistaken. I asked them if they might have heard ‘Mikel’ instead of ‘monkey.’ I thought I had covered that base.”
Chelsea’s decision to complain to the FA was taken without considering how it would be connected to Terry’s ban for racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand last year, yet still retaining the captaincy.
“The press seem to juxtapose ‘our support’ of John Terry and what’s going on here, and looking at us as being a bit hypocritical,” Buck said. “We have to divorce the John Terry situation from this. From our perspective, the latest situation was pretty straightforward.”
“We have an obligation to report what may be misconduct. We did that, in good faith and not maliciously,” he added.
Chelsea’s complaint against Clattenburg has been criticized by Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, who said he does not believe the allegations. United won the match at Stamford Bridge 3-2 with Javier Hernandez scoring from an offside position, after Chelsea duo Branislav Ivanovic and Fernando Torres had been sent off.
“The reaction has been very unfair,” Buck said. “We weren’t interested in any confrontation with the referee or anybody else, had no thoughts of revenge on the referee. He made two obvious mistakes [sending Torres off and allowing Hernandez’s goal] which changed the tide.”
“I felt we had the moral high ground, so I didn’t really feel that bad about the defeat or have that feeling in my stomach,” Buck added.
Clattenburg has not refereed since the allegations arose, although he resumed training on Monday with other top-flight officials.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later