The vice president of Fifa’s appeals court Fernando Mitjans claims Giorgio Chiellini admitted he had overreacted to Luis Suarez’s bite during the 2014 World Cup in order to get the Uruguay striker sent off.
Suarez was banned from playing in competitive matches for four months and was also suspended for nine international matches by Fifa.
“When they asked the referee what happened, he insisted that he didn’t see anything. They asked Chiellini, who was the victim, and the victim said “sir, he didn’t do anything to me”,” Mitjans told FOX Sports Radio Argentina.
“You know what Chiellini said? “It was a kiss that my girlfriend gave me and I did it to get him sent off”.
“Chiellini didn’t travel to the hearing. He didn’t even answer the tribunal’s questions by mail. I was laughing, the Swiss couldn’t believe it.
“”It was like a kiss that my girlfriend gave me and I did it to get an advantage”, he said. “Ask the Uruguayans. They did not let me intervene because I was part of Conmebol and they preferred to keep me out of it.
“It was a very delicate topic.”
Mitjans also claims that Fifa was wrong to take into account Suarez’s previous biting incidents. The Uruguayan bit Otman Bakkal in 2010 during his time at Ajax and Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic in his Liverpool days. It was these recidivist tendencies which contributed to the length of his playing ban.
“You ask me, and I said it to them, it’s madness,” he said.
“Regulatory madness because they took into account previous actions. I want to state that the standards for sporting tribunals are not criminal standards. But they used criminal standards against Suarez.
“They took into account what he did in the Netherlands, what he did in England and what he did at the World Cup in Brazil. If it’s like that you would have players who would never play again.”
