Peru Footballers Fight: Peru players got into a fight with Spanish police authorities on Monday night ahead of the Morocco vs Peru FIFA Friendlies match. As per reports, one player was even arrested. As Peruvian footballers reached their hotel last night, a huge number of their fans were waiting outside. Two sides of the incident have come to light. One where the police have said that the players were not respecting the police perimeter and the other where some witnesses say that the police confused a player for a fan and pushed him which ignited the fight. Follow Football News Update on InsideSport.IN.
Peru have a friendly match against Morocco at Atletico Madrid’s Civitas Metropolitan stadium in Spain on Wednesday. They have already reached Spain and it seems that a large number of fans have also arrived to greet their heroes. As per police officers, fans started gathering near the entrance of the hotel where the players were staying at around 7 PM.
Near 10 PM, Peruvian players reached their hotel, saw the gathering which by then took the size of around 300 fans, and decided to greet them. As they reached closer to the fans, the police authority tried to stop them and suddenly a fight broke out. Some fans took videos of the fight on their phones and posted them on social media.
The videos showed fans shouting toward the police, “They’re players, please, be calm!” After the whole thing was over, the captain of the team, MLS team, Orlando City goalkeeper Pedro Gallese complained, “We wanted to greet the fans and they began to punch us.” These indicate that some police officers probably confused some players as fans and took action.
🚨 Peru players clash with Spanish police in Madrid. 😳👮♂️🇵🇪
— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) March 27, 2023
However, a spokesperson close to the police authority said, “The fans tried to reach the players and the police got in the middle between the players and the fans to avoid an avalanche of people endangering public safety.” According to the same source, just one player was arrested following the chaos as he hit a police officer in the eye who got medical treatment at once. However, the source has not been able to point to the player who got arrested.
The Peruvian Football Federation released a statement after the statement that read – “The Peruvian Football Federation is totally supportive and backs our player and captain Pedro Gallese and have accompanied him since the incident occurred outside the hotel where the team were staying ahead of their friendly against Morocco.
We reiterate that we are respectful of the authorities and the procedures of each country that we visit. For this reason we are at the full disposal of both the internal and external enforcement authorities and supervisory bodies to try to clarify what occurred. We call on them to remain calm and we express our firm rejection of violence.”
