Enzo Fernandez will not be punished by the Football Association after the Chelsea star was caught singing a racist and transphobic chant following Argentina’s Copa America triumph.
That’s despite the FA charging Tottenham’s Rodrigo Bentancur over controversial comments he made about club captain Son Heung-min.
In an interview on Uruguayan television in June, Bentancur suggested that all people from South Korea ‘looked the same’, before swiftly apologising for his remarks.
The midfielder has until next Thursday to respond to the charges and could be punished with a 12-game ban.
It was anticipated that Fernandez could receive a similar punishment after the midfielder posted a video on Instagram which appeared to show him and several of his Argentina teammates singing a derogatory chant about the France national team.
First sung by Argentina fans during the 2022 World Cup, the chant claims that France’s players are ‘all from Angola’ and makes a vile reference to a reported relationship between Kylian Mbappe and transgender model Ines Rau.
During the video, several players could be heard singing the first two lines of the song, ‘on passport, French nationality, listen, spread the word, they play in France, but they are all…’, before someone is heard saying, ‘cut the video’.
This occurred just hours after they had won the Copa America final in July, leaving several of the 23-year-old’s Chelsea teammates furious, with Wesley Fofana calling it ‘uninhibited racism’.
Chelsea and FIFA opened investigations into the incident, while Fernandez apologised publicly and privately, but unlike Bentancur he will escape punishment from the FA due to a technicality in disciplinary procedures.
According to the Daily Mail, despite Fernandez being a ‘participant’ in English football, the FA cannot actually intervene in the matter.
This is because the video in question was recorded while the player was on international duty, meaning it falls under the jurisdiction of FIFA and South America’s governing body CONEMBOL.
Though Bentancur’s offence took place on Uruguayan TV he had not actually been released by Tottenham for international fixtures and therefore it can be considered an FA matter.
It is the same technicality that has allowed Manchester City hero Rodri to escape FA punishment after the comments he made about Gibraltar during Spain’s Euro 2024 triumph celebrations.
Rodri and international teammate Alvaro Morata were issued with a one-match ban by UEFA after they chanted: ‘Gibraltar is Spanish’.
Enzo Maresca has controversially made Fernandez Chelsea captain in the wake of the scandal, a decision the manager has defended after Ian Wright labelled it ’embarrassing’.
‘All of us make mistakes. It’s important to recognise Enzo did a mistake, recognised the mistake and it’s finished.
‘I don’t know about you, but I did some mistakes in the past and I recognised. As a human being, if you do a mistake and you recognise, you are not going to be punished for life.
‘Enzo did a mistake, recognised. For me, he is one of the references and I have nothing to add.’
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