Tottenham’s appeal against Rodrigo Bentancur’s ban does more harm than good

Just when it seemed we had finally reached a conclusion to the saga surrounding Rodrigo Bentancur’s racist comments about team-mate Son Heung-min, Tottenham Hotspur have reignited the story.

The club have lodged an appeal against the midfielder’s seven-game ban which was imposed by an independent regulatory commission following an investigation by the Football Association.

Let’s get the most important details out of the way first. In June, Bentancur appeared on the television show Por la Camiseta which is broadcast in his native Uruguay. During an interview with journalist Rafa Cotelo, Bentancur said South Korea international Son and his cousins “all look the same.”

The 27-year-old apologised to Son in public and privately. Bentancur was officially charged by the FA with an aggravated breach of Rule E3.1 in September. The three-member regulatory commission met last week and upheld the charge. Their report stated that the suspension had to be between six and 12 games, with six being the standard minimum punishment. They decided to give Bentancur a seven-match ban, which means he will miss Tottenham’s Carabao Cup quarter-final tie with Manchester United next month, but it does not apply to the Europa League.

In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Tottenham said: “While we accept the guilty finding against Rodrigo by the independent regulatory commission, we believe the subsequent sanction is severe. Rodrigo will remain suspended from domestic competitions while the appeal is heard and the Club will make no further comment during this time.”

The best-case scenario with this appeal is that the ban is reduced by one game. The club have dragged out an unpleasant situation longer than was perhaps necessary, and in a way that jars with head coach Ange Postecoglou’s comments in September, when he said Bentancur had made a “big error” and that “he has got to take the punishment”.

The view at Tottenham is that while they accept Bentancur should be punished — and have never argued otherwise — his seven-game ban is harsh given shorter bans in other similar cases.

Ben Davies was asked about Bentancur’s ban while on international duty with Wales earlier this week. His answer was perfect.

“As a group, as a team at Tottenham, we’ve all put a line under it and moved on, but I think, ultimately, it’s important that we realise that these kind of things need to be looked at with the seriousness that it has been,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned and the team’s concerned, there’s a line under it now and we move on.”

But Spurs’ decision to appeal means that there is still no opportunity to do that. And what type of message does this send to the fanbase?

According to research previously commissioned by AIA (the Asia-based insurance firm which has been the club’s shirt-front sponsor since 2014), Spurs are supported by 12million South Koreans, which represents nearly a quarter of that country’s population. After Bentancur was charged in September, The Athletic spoke to a few Tottenham supporters of East Asian heritage outside the training ground. Chris Ding called Bentancur’s comments “unacceptable, harmful and offensive” while Lee, who lives near Seoul, said “a lot of fans in Korea said it was a disgrace.”

Kick It Out, the anti-discrimination and inclusion charity, received 1,332 reports of abuse during the 2023-24 Premier League season — a 33.2 per cent increase on the previous one. It says 731 (54 per cent) related to racism, and that a third of that figure were about comments directed towards people with East Asian heritage. This issue needs to be taken seriously but Tottenham’s actions fall far below expectations.

The cynical view is that all Spurs care about is potentially having Bentancur available to face Liverpool on December 22, which was due to be the last game of his ban. If we were being extremely kind, this approach might be easier to swallow if Postecoglou’s squad was beset by an injury crisis. However, Bentancur has been rotated in the holding midfield role with Yves Bissouma throughout the season. Bissouma is not exactly a bad replacement, while summer signing Archie Gray is capable of filling in there too.

Tottenham’s appeal would also suggest that any moral debate about whether Bentancur should or should not play in the Europa League while he is banned domestically is redundant, as he will probably still be selected.

Son embraces Bentancur upon his return from injury last season (Charlotte Wilson/Getty Images)

Some might argue that Bentancur’s seven-game ban is harsh in the context of previous sanctions for racially offensive comments. (Tottenham, without referring to previous cases, referred to Bentancur’s sanction as “severe”.)

In 2020, Edinson Cavani got a three-game ban for a comment on Instagram. In 2019, Bernardo Silva got a one-game ban for a comment on Twitter. But the FA has a different standard for comments which are both made “in writing only or via the use of any communication device”, and where there is no “genuine intent” to be discriminatory or offensive. In such cases, the minimum ban is three games rather than six, which is why Cavani got the lesser punishment. (The minimum bans were different at the time of Silva’s offence).

But the fact is that Bentancur’s comment was spoken in a TV interview, not written on social media. Some may disagree with it, but the rule is perfectly clear. Bentancur cannot escape being held to the tougher standard.

Others have pointed to the video of Argentina players singing a racist song, broadcast by Chelsea’s Enzo Fernandez, but not looked at by the FA. The reality is that because that occurred during the Copa America, it falls under the jurisdiction of CONMEBOL, not the FA. But because the Bentancur video was in his own home, on his own time, he is still considered a participant in English football, and therefore the FA was obliged to investigate.

Tottenham’s own behaviour throughout this process has appeared inconsistent. They have never commented publicly if the midfielder faced any internal punishment for abusing their captain. Bissouma was given a one-match ban by the club in August after video footage emerged of him appearing to inhale nitrous oxide, which is more commonly known as hippie crack or laughing gas, from a balloon. Bissouma’s actions were foolish but Bentancur’s words will have had a bigger impact on a much larger number of people.

What will disappoint many people is the gap between the contrition shown in public by Bentancur and the arguments that we now know were made in private. Fans might have hoped that, given Bentancur’s apologies, he might have accepted the charge and the ban. That would at least have drawn a line under this whole story.

But the written reasons for the sanction, published by the FA on Monday, tell a different story. Bentancur denied the misconduct charge and denied that it was an aggravated breach. His argument, made in his written submissions to the commission, was that his words to Cotelo were “sarcastic and a gentle rebuke” after Cotelo had referred to Son as “the Korean”. They were “intended to be a light-hearted and jocular manner of chiding the journalist for his use of a generalisation that was wholly inappropriate”.

Bentancur appeared in 15 of Tottenham’s first 17 matches of this season (Adam Davy/Getty Images)

So what about Bentancur’s apologies, in public and to Son in private? (Remember that Son said Bentancur was on the verge of tears when he apologised to him face to face.) “It was submitted that, in his apologies, the Player was apologising, not for what he said, but for the inadequate reporting on the interview which excluded Mr Cotelo’s reference to ‘the Korean’”, the commission’s written reasons observed. Fans and readers will make up their own minds about how plausible that is while Son might be questioning how genuine those initial apologies were.

The view of the commission was that Bentancur’s own apologies showed how offensive he knew his comments were at the time. As did the initial statement released by the club. As did the statements made by Son himself.

“We cannot accept that submission, which flies in the face of the evidence,” the commission wrote. “It does not sit with the content or form of (Bentancur’s) apologies or the response of THFC or Heung-min Son.”

Bentancur also made the argument that he had “a reasonable expectation of privacy”, and a “reasonable expectation that the journalist would show more common sense in what he posted”. This argument was also rejected by the commission — they said they were not “impressed” by it — given Cotelo was at Bentancur’s house for four hours with a film crew. He knew that what he said would be broadcast.

When weighing up how long the ban should be, the commission’s report makes explicit reference to this gap between Bentancur’s public apologies and his attempts to get himself off the hook. The report said it was “greatly to his credit” that Bentancur took responsibility for his comments so quickly. “It was not to his credit that, thereafter, he elected to deny the charge on grounds which, on their face, undermined that initial, commendable reaction,” the report says, before concluding that his remorse “was and is genuine”.

It is a messy situation which will have alienated sections of Tottenham’s fanbase. At a time when their performances on the pitch have been underwhelming, they keep generating more unnecessary noise off it.

(Top photo: Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)