July 24 – Croatian club HNK Rijeka have hit back strongly at Manchester City’s decision to take their players off the field because of alleged racism in an under-21 fixture in Novigrad on Tuesday.
The game was abandoned just before halftime after City’s 19-year-old French midfielder Seko Fofana, who had been shown a red card for an off-the-ball incident, was then apparently verbally abused by a Rijeka player.
Patrick Vieira (pictured), City’s elite development coach, led his players off in protest but in a strongly worded statement the Croatians, who have been in trouble several times in the past with FIFA and UEFA at both national and club level, denied any wrongdoing.
“We strongly reject unfounded racism allegations mentioned in the statement Manchester City has posted on its website and want to stress that Rijeka itself had six players from Nigeria on the team,” the statement said.
“We also want to point out that HNK Rijeka, in cooperation with Fare (Football Against Racism in Europe), has been supporting the campaign against racism for years and we strongly condemn every such incident. We are very unpleasantly surprised by the serious and unfounded allegations, which we entirely reject.”
The Croatian club’s youth coach, Ranko Buteka, also denied any of his players racially insulted any City player and suggested Vieira may have led his team off because the hosts, who were leading 1-0 at the time, were too strong.
“After our first goal, we expected more pressure from City but we remained the dominant team in all departments,” Buketa was quoted as saying. “They responded with more aggression, which resulted in a red card for them.
“While the first tougher tackle on [Filip] Dangubic could be classified as reckless, the really violent tackle on Marko Marcius only a minute later was unjustifiable, so the Manchester midfielder was rightly sent off. What ensued was something rarely seen, even in friendly games.
“The Manchester coach, Patrick Vieira, entered the pitch, discussed something with the referee and then, to the utter surprise of the packed stadium, withdrew his team from the pitch. The reasons are known only to him.
“Perhaps he had expected an easier rival, against whom they could easily dominate and easily score, but this wasn’t the case against us.”
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