Chelsea defender suffers alleged racist abuse during win at Tottenham; PFA calls for government probe; Neville wants players to walk off
Antonio Rudiger has spoken out publicly after suffering alleged racist abuse during Chelsea's win over Tottenham and demanded to know "when will this nonsense stop?"
Rudiger was seen around the 63rd minute indicating he had faced racist abuse, imitating a monkey gesture.
In a series of tweets on Sunday night, the Chelsea defender posted:
'It is really sad to see racism again at a football match, but I think it's very important to talk about it in public. If not, it will be forgotten again in a couple of days (as always).
'I don't want to involve Tottenham as an entire club into this situation as I know that just a couple of idiots were the offenders. I got a lot of supportive messages on social media from Spurs fans as well in the last hours - thank you a lot for this. (2/4)'
'Ireally hope that the offenders will be found and punished soon, and in such a modern football ground like the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with dozens of TV and security cameras, it must be possible to find and subsequently punish them. (3/4)
'If not, then there must have been witnesses in the stadium who saw and heard the incident. It's just such a shame that racism still exists in 2019. When will this nonsense stop?'
Tottenham have begun an investigation into the incident "which will include liaising with Chelsea and their players for their observations".
In a statement, the club continued: "Any form of racism is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated in our stadium. We take any such allegations extremely seriously and shall take the strongest possible action against any individual found to be behaving in such a way, including stadium bans."
Meanwhile, the Professional Footballers' Association has called for 'a government enquiry into racism and the rise in hate crime within football and immediate and urgent action from an All-Party Group at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to address this urgent issue.'
Speaking on Sky Sports after Sunday's game, Gary Neville spoke out passionately about the incident and the response required.
"We have a racism problem in the Premier League in England," said Neville.
"The Premier League have got to stand up. They hide behind the FA on this issue. They hide behind the FA, in my opinion. They push disciplinary issues onto the FA.
"I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we have just had an election in this country where both main parties and the leaders of both main parties are accused constantly over the last month of fuelling racism and accepting racism within their parties.
"If it is accepted at the highest office in the country, we are not talking about it at a micro level we are talking about it at an absolutely enormous level, the highest office in the country.
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