WOLVES ROW
Wolves star Daniel Podence sent off for punching opponent after Hwang Hee-chan ‘racially abused’ in friendly
Gary O'Neil said he was proud of the player's reaction
WOLVES star Daniel Podence was sent off for punching an opponent during a pre-season friendly after alleged racist abuse of Hwang Hee-chan.
The Premier League side are currently in Marbella and took on Serie A new boys Como, who have Cesc Fabregas as head coach, yesterday.
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Wolves had a 1-0 lead when the trouble erupted in the 68th minute.
Players from both teams became embroiled in a coming together before Podence was spotted swinging a punch at an opposition defender, which led to the 28-year-old receiving a red card.
The incident started after Wolves forward Hwang claimed a Como player had racially abused him.
It is not suggested that Podence punched the Como player alleged to have made racist comments.
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That led to the furious response from the Wolves team, and stars and coaches from both sides held talks for several minutes.
Wolves boss Gary O’Neil spoke to Hwang and offered him the opportunity to abandon the match.
But the South Korean was determined to continue and play out the 90 minutes.
O’Neil said: “Channy heard a racist remark which is really disappointing.
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“I spoke to Channy about it, checked whether he wanted to take the team off or come off himself, but he was keen the team carried on and got the work they needed.
"It’s really disappointing that it happened, that we have to talk about it and that it impacted the game – not ideal and things like that shouldn’t be around.
“He’s really disappointed, of course, and understandably.
“I’m proud of the fact that he wanted to carry on and put his team first in a difficult moment for him.
“He knew it was a pre-season trip and he wanted the lads to work and get their minutes, even though he’d suffered something hugely offensive.
“Channy will be OK, he’ll get our full support and we’ll pick him up in the morning and make sure he’s OK.”
He added: “It’s a together group. Of course, there’s ways to handle that and we don’t want to leave ourselves short on the pitch, but it’s a together group.
“We’ve worked really hard this week, had a good week, had some great moments in the game, but it’s an unfortunate incident we have to deal with and have to discuss when, ideally, we’d be talking about the game.
“Of course, when an incident like that happens in a game, it’s the first thing we discuss.”
A club statement then confirmed: “Racism or discrimination in any form is completely unacceptable and should never be left unchallenged, and Wolves will be submitting a formal complaint to Uefa regarding the incident.”
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At the time of writing, Como have yet to make any public comment on the incident.
Matt Doherty scored the only goal of the match to claim a 1-0 victory for Wolves in their first pre-season match.
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