The chickens (or cockerels?) are coming home to roost for Rodrigo Bentancur.
You could never say the progress of justice is speedy, but after making racist comments with regards to Son Heung-min on Uruguayan television, Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Rodrigo Bentancur has been formally charged by the FA under rules E3.1 and E3.2:
While the wording under rule E3.1 is somewhat murky, the language surrounding E3.2 is not: improper, abusive, or insulting words that include a reference, whether express or implied, to nationality, race, or ethnic origin constitute an aggravated breach of FA regulations. Did Rodrigo Bentancur break these rules? Absolutely.
I wrote about the comments in greater detail a few months back, and won’t go into more detail here, but while Rodrigo’s words weren’t intentionally malicious, they were at best thoughtless, and went towards normalization of harmful racist tropes and as such fall under Rule E3.2. Though Sonny, Bentancur, and the club all released statements in the aftermath of the event, with the Uruguayan offering a rather measly apology in response, the FA has talked a big talk in recent times around cutting down racism in football – and as such incidents like this should be addressed appropriately. Though Bentancur has until September 19 (a week from now) to contest the charges, I don’t know why he would, as it seems pretty clear-cut he is in breach – though it is possible the aforementioned non-apology will go towards reducing his punishment and any contest would be more towards mitigation, rather than absolution.
Speaking of punishment, it’s hard to determine what Bentancur’s will be if found guilty. Digging around, I couldn’t find an exact analogue to Bentancur’s situation, with most charges under the above rules relating to incidences of abuse within the context of a match. Some of those include Luis Suarez and John Terry, but those cases were over a decade ago, with Suarez banned for eight matches and Terry for four. I would say a suspension for Bentancur is quite likely, and it could fall anywhere between a couple of matches and a dozen.
There’s surely more to come on this – let’s see where the FA take it.
