The Croatian soccer federation (HNS) has said it will investigate Manchester City’s claim that one of its players was racially abused during an U21 game. City coach Patrick Vieira took histeam off the field after Seko Fofana, 20, complained he suffered racial abuse in a friendly against HNK Rijeka on Tuesday. Though the match was abandoned, Rijeka said the racism claim was”baseless.”
Fofana made the allegations that led to the players leaving the field shortly after being sent off for an off-the-ball challenge. The HNS said it is gathering information about theincident. “If there are any decisions to be made we’ll make it public on our website,” it said in a statement. “Fighting against racism (and any sort of discrimination) is one of the keycomponents of our president Davor Suker’s program.”
Rijeka rejected the claim that one of its players racially abused Fofana. Coach Ranko Buketa accused City of trying to deflectattention from the City player’s red card. “It looks like a move which is trying to hide a very ugly foul by the Manchester City player that resulted in exclusion, followed by a hasty andillogical decision of the coaching staff to withdraw the team from the field,” he said.