Liam Rosenior has called for players and coaches found guilty of racism to be banned from football for life and said experiencing abuse on a football pitch \u201cis the worst feeling you can ever possibly imagine\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Real Madrid forward Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior left the pitch<\/a> after alleging that Benfica\u2019s Gianluca Prestianni racially abused him during their Champions League match on Tuesday<\/a>. Prestianni has denied racist abuse and Benfica have said he was a \u201cvictim\u201d of a \u201csmear campaign\u201d. The Argentinian faces a 10-game ban if found guilty by Uefa.<\/p>\n Benfica\u2019s manager, Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, appeared to suggest Vin\u00edcius had been provocative with his \u201cstupid\u201d goal celebration. Rosenior refused to comment on Mourinho\u2019s views, citing the current investigation, but believes the Brazil forward \u201cwas upset for a reason\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAny form of racism in society, let alone football, is unacceptable,\u201d Chelsea\u2019s head coach said. \u201cWhat I would say is when you see a player upset, how Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior was upset, normally they\u2019re upset for a reason.<\/p>\n \u201cII cannot speak about an incident where an investigation is ongoing. I won\u2019t speak about that incident. \u2019ve been racially abused myself. I know people who have been racially abused. What people have to understand is when you are judged for something that you should be proud of, it is the worst feeling you can ever possibly imagine. There are historical things to racism. I need to, as manager of this unbelievable football club, make my statement on it. If any player or any coach or any manager is ever found guilty of racism, they shouldn\u2019t be in the game. It\u2019s as simple as that for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked what he had made of Mourinho\u2019s comments, Rosenior said: \u201cAgain, it\u2019s context. What I would say is regardless how a player celebrates, race should never come into it. That is an ongoing investigation. I don\u2019t know the context of the situation. I don\u2019t know the context in which Jos\u00e9 said what he said, and I won\u2019t make a judgment on it. It\u2019s the same thing. I won\u2019t make a judgment until you get the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosenior, who revealed it was his decision to tell Chelsea\u2019s players to \u201cget some sun\u201d this week after an unrelenting schedule this season before they face Burnley on Saturday, blamed growing divisions in modern society on certain sections of the media \u201cwho make prejudgments on people\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of things that need to change in our society,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not talking about football. There\u2019s a lot of division. There\u2019s a lot of people in the media who make prejudgments on people or how they behave or who they are based on a sexual orientation, what country they come from, what religion they are, what colour of skin they have.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sickens me, to be honest. I think it\u2019s a wider debate than just football. I think people need to be held a lot more accountable than they are at the moment in terms of social media, in terms of the press, to make sure that these things are stamped out, because everybody should be judged equally based on the content of the character.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Rosenior has called for players and coaches found guilty of racism to be banned from football for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-478818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}