Joel Veltman has broken his silence regarding Declan Rice’s red card against Brighton before the international break.
The Arsenal midfielder will miss their upcoming game against Tottenham due to that sending off, with many attributing the decision to Veltman’s involvement in the incident.
Veltman has faced criticism from pundits, fans, and neutrals, who believe he played a key role in Rice receiving his second yellow card.
While Veltman’s wife responded to the backlash after the match, the player himself had remained silent until now.
As Premier League football resumes following the international break, Veltman has finally spoken out about the incident.
He said, as quoted by 90Mins:
“The only thing I can say is that I didn’t want to kick him. It’s just he kicked it away, I kicked him. I find it quite harsh as well. If you see my reaction, you can look back, I was not going to the referee to get him a second yellow, I was going to him ‘Why did you kick it? I’m sorry I kicked you’.
“I think he gave an amazing comment. I think that’s what personally surprised me about him, how he commented in the media after.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
We need to move past this controversy now and focus on preparing well for our game against Tottenham this weekend.
Rice could have been injured even if he had not been suspended, so we must prepare to win regardless.
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I am surprised we got no comments on this. It’s fine to move on from the issue, nothing can be done about that.
But this makes the ref’s decision look much worse than it already was.
Not really – if you read the what he’s said about it all, he thought the second yellow was harsh, he made positive comments about Rice’s character (for what he said to the media after the game) and defends himself against accusations he (veltman) was trying to hurt rice or con the ref. Unfortunately the key point is that rice kicked the ball and prevented the freekick, which is what the yellow card was given for – you can definitely say it was harsh and the ref could or should have let it go (particularly with the context of the one he let Brighton get away with earlier in the game), but as rice admits, he opened that door when there was no need.