Manchester City midfielder Rodri has been fined $107,000 (\u00a380,000) by the FA for comments made after the Citizens\u2019 2\u20132 draw with Tottenham Hotspur in February. The punishment follows an FA statement that said he acted in an \u201cimproper manner during a post-match media interview by making comments that imply bias and\/or question the integrity of a match official.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodri avoided a suspension and was instead handed a warning. The Spain international \u201cadmitted the charge against him\u201d at a hearing, and he submitted two letters in his defence that the FA accepted, leaving the monetary penalty as the only sanction.<\/p>\n
The remarks came after Tottenham\u2019s equaliser, struck by Dominic Solanke in the 70th minute, which City felt should have been disallowed. The striker seemingly kicked through Marc Gu\u00e9hi\u2019s leg to complete Spurs\u2019 comeback, and the goal stood amid vehement protests from the visitors.<\/p>\n
Rodri did not hide his frustration in the immediate aftermath. \u201cI know we won too much and the people don\u2019t want us to win but the referee has to be neutral and for me honestly, it\u2019s not fair,\u201d he said. He expanded on that view in the same interview: \u201cIt\u2019s not fair because we work so hard in these situations and now to make these decisions, we have to move on. Of course you need to come back but at the end, when everything is finished, we are frustrated because it\u2019s so clear the foul. He kicked the leg and of course with the push of the action on the ball, the ball goes in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodri also pointed to other contentious decisions affecting City since 2026, including Diogo Dalot avoiding a red card for a tackle on J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku in what became a 2\u20130 win for Manchester United.<\/p>\n
Although a domestic ban would not have prevented Rodri from playing in Manchester City\u2019s Champions League round of 16 tie with Real Madrid, the club would have been at risk of losing their midfield anchor in Premier League fixtures. In mitigation, Rodri told the FA: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel fair when the ultimate result of a match is influenced by an incorrect decision rather than just the performance of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FA fines Rodri $107,000 and warns him after his post-match criticism of refereeing in City-Spurs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1056,172],"tags":[1505,1064],"class_list":["post-8026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-city","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-ballon-dor-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}