Dele Alli laments 'betrayal' after one-game ban for coronavirus video
Dele Alli has claimed a friend “betrayed” him by selling a private Snapchat video of the Tottenham midfielder mocking coronavirus, after he was banned for the Premier League return at home to Manchester United next Friday.
The England international has also been fined £50,000 and must attend an educational course after being found guilty of an “aggravated breach” of the FA rule that includes a reference to race and/or colour and/or ethnic origin and/ or nationality.
Alli posted a video of himself wearing a mask in an airport lounge on 6 February before zooming in on an Asian man sitting nearby, with the caption “Corona whattttt, please listen with volume”.
The 24-year-old swiftly deleted the video that had been sent to a group of 160 people on his “close friends” list and posted an apology. Alli alleged at Monday’s FA hearing that one of them had copied it and sold it to a national newspaper.
“The player explained he decided to delete the video before he boarded his flight to Dubai,” read the FA’s written reasons for the decision released on Thursday. “It was the following day that he became aware that he had, in his words, been ‘betrayed’ by someone on his Snapchat group and the post had been given to the media.”
Alli also said he focused on the
Asian man because the man was coughing rather than because of his race. The three-man regulatory commission decided Alli was making an obvious connection between an
Asian man and the virus and had used an “unacceptable racist stereotype” in a misguided attempt at humour but ruled it did not think Alli was a racist and that he was telling the truth
“An apology was made in which the player detailed that he had ‘let himself down’ but it was the player’s evidence to the commission that he did not regard the content of the video to be of a kind to ‘cross the line’ into conduct answerable under Rule E3, in particular as the video, in his opinion, ‘had nothing to do with the ethnicity of the man’.”
Alli told Tottenham’s website: “In response to the FA decision I would like to apologise again for any offence caused by my behaviour. It was an extremely poorly judged joke about a virus that has now affected us more than we could ever have imagined.
“I’m grateful the FA has confirmed that my actions were not racist because I despise racism of any kind. We all need to be mindful of the words and actions we use and how they can be perceived by others.”