Six years after, Referee Mark Clattenburg attacks Mikel Obi over monkey allegations

Former Premier League referee, Mark Clattenburg, has finally opened up on allegedly racially abusing Nigerian midfielder John Mikel Obi, when he was still a Chelsea player, during their 3-2 defeat to Manchester United at Stamford Bridge in 2012.
Clattenburg, who has since left England, to take up a position as Saudi Arabia’s head of refereeing, says he has no respect for the Super Eagles captain, because he kept quiet about the incident.

“I had sent off two Chelsea players and there was an offside goal late on as well, so it was pretty heated coming off.

“Mikel came into my dressing room and certain things happened which I’ll leave in there. But then Ramires made the allegation that I’d called Mikel a monkey on the pitch.

“The first few days I was soul-searching — you know you’re innocent yet you’re made to feel otherwise. It took four weeks for Chelsea to reveal the moment it had allegedly happened, and after that it was very quickly dismissed.

“But Bruce Buck (the Chelsea chairman) didn’t understand that referees are normal people living in a normal house. He thought we lived in a gated community with security and wandered into work every day carrying a washbag.

“The media were camped outside my house for days on end. It made world news. That is hard to deal with, I tell you. I knew it wasn’t true, but I could not speak. Me and my family went through hell — I even thought about quitting.

“If Mikel had come out and apologised, OK, be a man about it.

“But I haven’t got respect for someone who makes a mistake on someone else’s allegation and can’t then say sorry,” Clattenburg told SportsMail.

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