Mark Clattenburg has taken another swipe at former Super Eagles captain John Obi Mikel over an alleged accusation which happened in 2012 during Chelsea’s 2-3 loss to Manchester United in the English Premier League.
Mikel confronted the referee alleging that he racially insulted him during the game. An abuse he claimed he was told by his teammate Ramirez who was the only one to have claimed he heard the insults.
Clattenburg was later cleared by the FA with Mikel subsequently charged for misconduct, fined £60,000 in addition to a three match ban. The police also dropped their inquiry into the case due to lack of sufficient evidence against the person of Clattenburg.
In March, Clattenburg who left his role as a premier League referee to pick up the job of head of referees in Saudi Arabia said Mikel is yet to apologize over the incident. Yesterday he once again spoke about the pains he felt from the same incident which almost ruined his career as a referee.
“To be accused of something that you haven’t done is really difficult to deal with,” Clattenburg said.
“To be found guilty of something before you’d even had the chance to speak is really difficult to deal with because I’ve always believed that you should be innocent until proven guilty.
“However that wasn’t the case and I didn’t want to come back and referee at that point because unfortunately I fell out of love with the game.
“But I had a mortgage to pay, a family to look after, and therefore I had to go back to refereeing. I was lucky that over the years I fell back in love with football and it made me achieve what I actually did.”
