{"id":39608,"date":"2021-03-23T16:12:21","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T16:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/?p=39608"},"modified":"2021-03-23T15:54:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T15:54:35","slug":"mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row","title":{"rendered":"Mikel Obi refuses to apologize to ex-EPL referee, Mark Clattenburg over racism row"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\">Nigeria<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>Former Chelsea midfielder, John Mikel Obi, has insisted he does not need to apologize to ex-Premier League referee, Mark Clattenburg, over a racism row that happened in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>During the Blues\u2019 3-2 defeat to Manchester United at Stamford Bridge, Mikel Obi\u2019s teammate at the time, Ramires, claimed he heard a racist slur aimed at the Nigerian from Clattenburg.<\/p>\n<p>Ramires claimed he heard Clattenburg say \u201cshut up you monkey\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The allegations saw Clattenburg miss four weekends of Premier League fixtures, before he was cleared by the Football Association.<\/p>\n<p>The police also dropped their own inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>However, speaking to The Athletic, Mikel Obi said: \u201cIn the heat of the game, players go through emotions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYour colleague said they heard something, but they may not have heard right. Did he say it or not? I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut if your colleague comes up to you, of course, you\u2019re going to trust what they say, someone you see and speak to every day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I can\u2019t apologise for something that my colleague said he (Clattenburg) did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. Former Chelsea midfielder, John Mikel Obi, has insisted he does not need to apologize to ex-Premier League referee, Mark Clattenburg, over a racism row that happened in 2012. During the Blues\u2019 3-2 defeat to Manchester United at Stamford Bridge, Mikel Obi\u2019s teammate at the time, Ramires, claimed he heard a racist slur [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":39607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,18,26],"tags":[1570,2140,3550,3549,254],"class_list":["post-39608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-sport","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-nigeria-2","tag-mark-clattenburg","tag-mikel-obi","tag-nigeria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mikel Obi refuses to apologize to ex-EPL referee, Mark Clattenburg over racism row - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Chelsea midfielder, John Mikel Obi, has insisted he does not need to apologize to ex-Premier League referee, Mark ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mikel Obi refuses to apologize to ex-EPL referee, Mark Clattenburg over racism row\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former Chelsea midfielder, John Mikel Obi, has insisted he does not need to apologize to ex-Premier League referee, Mark ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nigeria\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-03-23T16:12:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2021\/03\/img-605a0f1a70a94.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Mikel Obi refuses to apologize to ex-EPL referee, Mark Clattenburg over racism row\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-03-23T16:12:21+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row\"},\"wordCount\":191,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2021\/03\/img-605a0f1a70a94.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Nigeria\",\"Mark Clattenburg\",\"Mikel Obi\",\"Nigeria\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"homepage-english\",\"Sport\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/mikel-obi-refuses-to-apologize-to-ex-epl-referee-mark-clattenburg-over-racism-row\",\"name\":\"Mikel Obi refuses to apologize to ex-EPL referee, Mark Clattenburg over racism row - 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