The day could not have been any uglier for Tottenham Hotspur, both on and off the pitch. Jose Mourinho saw his side dominated in a 2-0 home loss to Chelsea that will see them now without the services of stellar forward Heung-Min Son. Going bigger and beyond all of that was the deplorable behavior of a few of their fans.
Son was shown a red card and received a three match ban for kicking Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger. After the incident Rudiger was allegedly subjected to racial abuse by Spurs supporters. Projectiles were thrown on to the pitch, seemingly targeted at Blues keeper Kepa Arrizabalaga. So there is a whole lot to digest here, and we’ll started with the Son-Rudiger altercation.
Son sees red ? after lashing out at Rudiger ?
Was this the right decision??
Chelsea still lead Tottenham 2-0 with 20 minutes left in the game ?
— Soccer Virgins (@SoccerVirgins) December 22, 2019
Mourinho hit out at Rudiger, using heavy sarcasm to imply that the central defender on his former club was play-acting.
He “wishes” Rudiger a speedy recovery from his “broken ribs.”
“I hope Rudiger will recover from broken ribs because he will have broken ribs for sure,” the ex-Blues boss said.
“If he does nothing and the referee immediately gives a yellow card to Rudiger then he won’t have a reaction.”
“But if he doesn’t then you can have this sort of emotional reaction. which the referee and VAR has to analyse. For me football is football, the Premier League will be English football and for me that red card is a strange one.”
“But I don’t want to focus on that because my team lost and I have to be complimentary to my opponents because they had the better handle on the game.”
Moving on to the incident of racial abuse, Rudiger motioned to the officials what he saw and heard, using hand and arm gestures to convey it.
Have a look at the video below:
Rudiger appearing to highlight racist abuse from Tottenham fans after the Son sending off pic.twitter.com/fxBCCScPFp
— Tom Burrows (@TBurrows16) December 22, 2019
“It is made very clear to us all that if we have heard any racist incident to report it. Tony came to me and told me he was listening to racist songs towards him so I reported it to the referee,” Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta said.
“We are very concerned and aware of this behavior. Altogether we need to make it stop. I hope everything gets clear and we eradicate it as soon as possible. It‘s an issue not just in football but in life.”
Mourinho’s initial reaction to the racist incident, when asked about it was as follows:
“I saw nothing, I saw the referee follow the protocol, he came to Andre Marriner (fourth official), he came to me and Frank Lampard and told us what was happening. The protocol was followed and we are one of the clubs…every club is together on this situation and of course we are disappointed.”
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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