French League Suspends Neymar for Two Matches for Assault on Álvaro González

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Neymar, the star of French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain, expelled last Sunday during his team’s defeat to Olympique de Marseille (0-1) for attacking Spanish defender Álvaro González, was suspended for two matches on Wednesday by the French Professional Football League (LFP) Disciplinary Committee.

The committee ordered the opening of an investigation into allegations the 28-year-old Brazilian made of racist remarks by the defender at the end of the French championship match. Neymar posted on his social media: “My only regret is that I didn’t hit this jerk in the face.”

Later he wrote a new message on Twitter in which he implied that the VAR (video assistant referee) must have captured the assault: “Now I want to see them getting the footage of the racist calling me MONO HIJO DE PUTA (monkey son of a bitch)”.

“The VAR capturing my “assault” is crap … Now I want to see them getting the footage of the racist calling me MONO HIJO DE PUTA (monkey son of a bitch)… that I want to see! What about this? I do a rainbow kick, you punish me…. A noogie and I get expelled… and them? What about them?”
– Neymar Jr (@neymarjr) September 13th, 2020

Álvaro González replied with a message illustrated by a picture of him and his black colleagues from Marseille. “There is no place for racism,” he said. “A clean career and with many colleagues and friends in everyday life. Sometimes you have to learn to lose and accept it on the field. Incredible three points today,” he added.

The Disciplinary Committee also suspended Argentine midfielder Leandro Paredes from PSG for two games and his countryman Darío Benedetto from Olympique for one. The Argentine Ángel Di María (PSG) will be called on September 23 to clarify a potential spit on González, as the committee explained in a statement at the end of its meeting on Wednesday.

Neymar and Paredes have been suspended for three matches, among them an automatic suspension, which in practice means that they will miss two games. The first one was fulfilled on Wednesday, when his team faced Metz in Parc des Princes and won by 1-0 with a head goal from Julian Draxler in the 48th minute of the second half.

The most severe punishments were handed to French player Layvin Kurzawa (PSG, six games) and Jordan Amavi (OM, three games) for mutual attack during Sunday night’s match, in which there were five expulsions.

In the 52nd minute, and with a 0-1 for Olympique, there was a commotion in which Kurzawa and Amavi attacked each other, while Paredes and Benedetto also fought. They were all given red cards.

In addition, Neymar was expelled after the VAR alerted the referee about some footage in which, using the match break, he slapped Gonzalez in the back of the head, something he had done at other times during the match.

The Brazilian star repeatedly accused the Spanish defender of making a racist comment, specifically “monkey son of a bitch”. González repeatedly denied having made the comment, and one of his uncles told a Spanish television channel that he had in fact called him “silly,” a word with a similar sound but a whole different meaning. Over the past few days, both OM and PSG have defended their respective players on this issue.

Source: El País