CHINA CRISIS AS KENEDY IS SENT HOME
Champions forced to send home Kenedy
CHELSEA fear they are facing a fight to rebuild their reputation in the world’s biggest consumer economy after two social media posts by Brazilian winger Kenedy sparked outrage in China.
The English champions reacted by issuing a grovelling apology on their official website, which was translated paragraph by paragraph into Chinese — and promised Kenedy would be ‘reprimanded and disciplined’.
They sent him home where he will face more questions from the FA’s disciplinary chiefs, who are set to investigate.
The 21-year-old, who cost £6million when signed from Fluminense in 2015, sparked a diplomatic row in which one Chinese media outlet accused Chelsea of ‘humiliating’ their nation and threatened to delete all references to the club.
It all started before Saturday’s friendly against Arsenal in the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing when the Brazilian uploaded two messages on to his Instagram account.
One said ‘F*** China’ in Portuguese and the other featured a Chinese security guard sleeping against a wall with the words ‘wake up China you idiot’. The posts were quickly deleted and Kenedy wrote a glib apology on Instagram Stories, which meant it soon expired and disappeared, which inflamed the problem.
When he came on as a secondhalf substitute against Arsenal he was jeered by some spectators and the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of China’s Communist Party, wrote a stinging editorial.
It said: ‘China does not welcome a player like this, nor does China welcome a team like this. Kenedy’s absurd comments are not only impolite but also uneducated. He has created an incident that has humiliated China, an incident that so many fans simply cannot tolerate.’
After a 3-2 defeat in a friendly by Bayern Munich in Singapore, manager Antonio Conte said: ‘The player is sorry. He understands his mistake. It is a difficult situation also for the club and for this reason we have to make this decision. He must go home.’ Kenedy (below) flew with the team from Beijing to Singapore after the Arsenal game and trained with them on Sunday and Monday before being sent home yesterday. It is believed Chelsea still feel he has a future at the club. However, the club had committed a grave offence in the eyes of the Chinese. Three days after the posts, Chelsea went into diplomatic overdrive in the hope of limiting the damage. China is a precious market for Premier League clubs and this was Chelsea’s first visit to the mainland since 2008. They had prefaced the tour with many messages from board level about how important it was to embrace China and attract Chinese interest and investment.
In the official tour brochure, chairman Bruce Buck wrote: ‘We hope the game supplies some reward to our Chinese fans who show huge commitment all year round to support the Blues. Our visit is about more than just playing games and going home. It is also about leaving a legacy.’
Mark Dreyer, Beijing-based editor of China Sports Insider, said: ‘This is certainly not going to help Chelsea attract new fans in China but the club has done the right thing by being humble and apologetic and I think this will blow over quite quickly. It is not as if he is a big name, and the club appear to have tackled the issue.’