“What happened was unacceptable. In the times we live in we
cannot accept differences being made like that about colour or race,” Neymar
told French broadcaster RMC Sport after scoring a hat-trick when the game was
restarted on Wednesday, with PSG winning 5-1.
“It has no place in football, or in life, or in any sport,
so our attitude was perfect.”
The match in Paris was halted in the 14th minute on Tuesday
as a row erupted amid accusations the Romanian fourth official had used a
racist term to describe Basaksehir’s Cameroonian assistant coach, Pierre Webo.
With Basaksehir refusing to come back out unless the
official was removed, the game was played to a finish 24 hours later with a new
refereeing team.
Meanwhile, European football’s governing body UEFA has
opened an investigation into the unprecedented incidents.
“Sometimes in extreme circumstances these things need to be
done to see if the world can change a little,” said Neymar, who together with
other players took a knee before the restart on Wednesday in support of the
Black Lives Matter movement.
‘The fault of one person’
PSG had already qualified for the last 16 before the
restart, but they needed to beat Basaksehir to finish top of their group and
Kylian Mbappe scored their other two goals in a one-sided game.
Neymar added: “Yesterday I wasn’t very happy because we had
prepared ourselves for the game, and so to go back home, then get the body
warmed up again for the next day, is very hard, but we all accepted it. We all
decided to do it together.”
Meanwhile, Basaksehir coach Okan Buruk accused the Romanian
referee, Ovidiu Hategan, of failing to properly manage the situation after the
alleged comments made by the fourth official, Sebastian Coltescu.
“The fourth official used an unacceptable word to Pierre
Achille Webo. The referee should have dealt with the situation properly but
didn’t. We had to show that we were with Webo,” Buruk said.
“The players decided to stop. Some of them didn’t want to
come back out. We are a team and we had to stick together.”
He added: “UEFA did the right thing by making it possible to
play the next day.
“Webo was upset. We all gave him our support, but it’s someone
else who should feel bad and that is the person who used the words. He is the
guilty one.
“We have to show that we can all live together. Humanity is
the most important thing.”
The incident drew a reaction from Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, who is understood to have close links to the Turkish champions.
However, Buruk played down suggestions that the row could
spill over into a diplomatic issue.
“There are no problems between Turkey and Romania. It is the
fault of one person, not an entire country,” he said.
AFP