“I then asked him to calm down and stop insulting me and then he said he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.”
Phil Jones is alleged to have insulted a Uefa doping control officer following the Europa League final back in May. The Manchester United defender was banned for two European games and fined €5,000 for “refusing to comply” with the requests of anti-doping officers following the team’s 2-0 victory over Ajax.
Daley Blind was also fined. Jones was accused of being verbally abusive to a Uefa officer when asked to take a drug test after the game in Stockholm. Details of what he allegedly said to earn the suspension and fine have since emerged. According to Uefa, Jones called the anti-doping officer a “f*cker.”
Both players refused to comply with anti-doping officers in May https://t.co/3oyxjjqeBq
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) July 31, 2017
The United defender is understood to have been angered at missing the celebrations following the match. His teammates posed for a photo paying tribute to the victims of the Manchester terror attack which occurred earlier that week. They held a banner which read: “Manchester – A City United,”
Jones was thought to be furious about missing the tribute.
According to the Manchester Evening News, UEFA’s head of president office Luka Zajc, wrote:
“The first player from Manchester United, Phil Jones, came to the DCS (doping control station) and was very upset that he had to be in the DCS. He wanted to leave the DCS to celebrate with the team but I told him that he had to do the sampling first. He then told me I was a f***** doing this and that I had a f****** job and how I could be so f****** stupid to consider having such a f****** job. I told him that this was the UEFA regulations and that my job was to do the control. He still continued to tell me I had a f****** job and how I even could do that job. I then asked him to calm down and stop insulting me and then he said he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.
“I trust that you can understand that, even if a player is frustrated or upset, he has to respect the work of the competition officials who are carrying out doping tests. This is the least we can expect from any professional sportsman. For your information, I can further advise that, on a strict application of the rules, the normal sanction imposed for insulting match officials would be a three-match suspension. In the circumstances of this particular case, however, the disciplinary body decided to impose a reduced sanction, given the full background elements.”
Jones will only be suspended for one Champions League match, as the first game of his two-game ban was served when United played Real Madrid in the Super Cup earlier this month.
