Rodrigo Bentancur, 27 year old Uruguayan midfielder for Tottenham, has been handed a seven match ban and £100,000 fine for racist comments in an interview, regarding club teammate Son.
In the interview, Bentancur was asked to provide a shirt belonging to a Spurs player. “Sonny's," he replied. “It could be Sonny’s cousin as they all look the same.”
The interview took place earlier this year, before the season had started, in his native Uruguay.
Since, he offered a private apology to Son and Spurs have issued a statement saying “We can confirm that the Club has appealed against the length of Rodrigo Bentancur’s FA suspension, issued earlier this week.” While we accept the guilty finding against Rodrigo by the independent regulatory commission, we believe the subsequent sanction is severe.”
This follows the club’s appeal to have his ban reduced from 7 games to 6 games. This would mean he’d be available for their clash against league leaders, Liverpool.
When charging the Uruguay international, the FA labelled it as “an alleged breach of FA rule E3 for misconduct in relation to a media interview".
Bentancur’s comments support research from anti-racism charity Kick it Out, who say there has been a rise in both incidents of racism towards East and South East Asian players, 55% of the 395 reports of "player-targeted" racist abuse in stadiums and online to KIO in the 2023-24 season were towards those from an East Asian background.
