Tottenham Hotspur have appealed against Rodrigo Bentancur’s seven-game ban for comments he made about team-mate Son Heung-min.
Bentancur was given a seven-game ban from domestic games and fined £100,000 ($127k) by an independent commission after he was found to have used “insulting words”, and that it was an ‘aggravated breach’ of the FA’s rules, as his words referred to “ethnic origin, colour, race, nationality”. Bentancur had said, with reference to Son, “Sonny, or one of Sonny’s cousins, as they all look more or less the same” in an interview on Uruguayan TV in June.
Tottenham were informed of the FA’s decision on November 12 and they had 14 days to decide whether to appeal against the decision itself or the sanction imposed, so until 27 November. Tottenham have decided to accept the decision but to appeal against the sanction, in the hope of getting the ban reduced.
There is likely only scope for a reduction by one game to Bentancur’s ban, given that the FA Standard Minimum ban for using discriminatory language is six games, a guideline that was introduced in 2020. While a regulatory commission can give a shorter ban in situations where the comments were made in writing or via the use of a “communication device” — such as when Edinson Cavani got a three-game ban in 2020 for a comment he made on Instagram — this is not the case here, as Bentancur’s comments were spoken in a TV interview.
Decisions on the length of the ban, within the framework of six and 12 games, are made with reference to aggravating and mitigating factors. “We consider that, in terms of culpability and consequences, this breach falls towards the lower end of the guideline range but not the lowest point,” the commission wrote of Bentancur’s offence. “Cases can easily be envisaged which are less serious than this, but nevertheless subject to the minimum suspension of six matches.”
The aggravating factors considered were that Bentancur is a “high-profile international footballer” in the Premier League and that his comments were made to a well-known journalist with a big online following. “It was reasonably foreseeable that the remarks would be widely distributed via posts and re-posts on the internet, as they were,” the report states.
Tottenham have the right to ask for the sanction to be set aside pending the outcome of the appeal, which in theory could allow Bentancur to face Manchester City this Saturday. But if that is not the case, and Bentancur’s ban is active already, and if it is reduced from seven to six games, then he could return to face Liverpool in the Premier League on December 22.
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