Tottenham have launched an appeal against the seven-match ban given to midfielder Rodrigo Bentancur for comments he made about team-mate Heung-Min Son. Spurs do not dispute the guilty verdict handed down by an independent commission but believe that the Football Association’s punishment is too “severe”.
“We can confirm that the club has appealed against the length of Rodrigo Bentancur’s FA suspension, issued earlier this week,” Spurs said. “While we accept the guilty finding against Rodrigo by the independent regulatory commission, we believe that the subsequent sanction is severe. Rodrigo will remain suspended from domestic competitions while the appeal is heard and the Club will make no further comment during this time.”
Bentancur was sanctioned after an interview in the summer, telling Uruguayan television in reference to Son: “Sonny, or one of Sonny’s cousins, because they all look more or less the same.” The independent panel found that this constituted an aggravated breach of FA regulations because it included a reference to the “ethnic origin, colour, race, nationality of his team-mate”. Bentancur initially denied the charge.
Given that Spurs have accepted the sanction but are disputing the charge, Bentancur’s absence would likely still be long. FA regulations require a minimum ban of six games for aggravated breaches of Rule E3.1. This ban can be shortened if a case can be made that the player could not reasonably have known that his comments would cause an offence; there would seem to be no obvious argument for this in the case of Bentancur.
As the regulatory commission noted in its submission, Bentancur’s breach “requires an immediate suspension of 6-12 matches, six matches being the ‘Standard Minimum’ penalty. While the Written Submissions for the Player vaguely suggest that a sanction of less than six matches could or should be imposed here, no exception to that minimum probably applies.”
The seventh match of Bentancur’s ban, which only applies to domestic fixtures, is currently the match at home to Liverpool on December 22. Before that Tottenham face Manchester City, Fulham, Bournemouth, Chelsea and Southampton in the Premier League before an EFL Cup tie against Manchester United.
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