Sevilla beat Liverpool 2-1 tonight in a match that was a “friendly” in designation only. Staged at Fenway Park in Boston, on the city’s hottest day since 1991, tempers rose along with mercury on the thermometer (it was nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Beantown today). Perhaps the only thing that anybody will remember from this preseason exhibition is Sevilla’s Joris Gnagnon viciously kicking Liverpool’s young left-back Yasser Larouci.
It was an ugly and scary moment to say the least. The 18-year-old had to be medically attended to for a considerable amount of time, and then stretchered off. Gnagnon was shown a red card, and he took umbrage with it. Here is the video below:
https://twitter.com/theCyberNewt/status/1153097718207864838
What a disgraceful tackle right there! Yikes!
Both managers commented on the scary, dirty tackle after the match.
“[It’s] much too early in the season to create headlines with saying the things I think about the situation,” said Reds boss Jurgen Klopp.
“It looks like he was lucky but, of course, how it always is with these things we have to wait a little bit. He couldn’t keep on playing, so that’s the first not-so-good sign but in the dressing room it was okay.”
Said Sevilla boss Julen Lopetegui in regards to Larouci: “I was worried about the player, but I asked Jürgen Klopp and he said he’s ok.”
He also added that Gnagnon was “very worried,” and that “he knows it was a bad tackle, a bad decision. The most important thing is for Larouci to be ok.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
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