• Premier League

Mourinho: Suarez deserves bite punishment

ESPN staff
June 29, 2014
Jose Mourinho does not agree with the inclusion of a stadium ban in Luis Suarez's four-month suspension for biting © Getty Images
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Jose Mourinho believes the length of Luis Suarez's suspension for biting Giorgio Chiellini is deserved but has questioned FIFA's decision to ban the striker from all football-related activity.

FIFA's disciplinary panel handed Suarez a four-month ban from all football-related activity, as well as a nine-match international suspension, despite the Liverpool striker's plea that his actions were not intentional.

'Suarez ban breaches his human rights'

  • Luis Suarez's four-month ban is an act of "barbarity" that breaches his human rights, according to Uruguay captain Diego Lugano.
  • "It's a breach of human rights that a player cannot go into a stadium where there are 80,000 people or into a hotel with his team-mates, that he cannot work for four months," Lugano said after Uruguay's 2-0 World Cup last 16 defeat to Columbia.
  • Click here to read more

Suarez left Uruguay's team hotel ahead of their 2-0 World Cup last 16 defeat against Columbia after his accreditation to enter the Maracana stadium was revoked. While Mourinho says Suarez's ban from playing is deserved, he cannot fathom why the 27-year-old has been issued a stadium ban.

"I think the punishment is deserved because it is an accumulation of the same negative act on the football pitch," Mourinho, speaking in his role as Yahoo's global football ambassador, said.

"What I really don't like in football is the stadium ban. What's the problem for Suarez to be in the stadium, in the middle of the Uruguay supporters watching the game between his country and Colombia? It's too hard; it's something that I really don't understand.

"If his punishment comes as a sequence of three similar mistakes in three different situations, it is something that he deserves. It has to stop."

Mourinho allegedly got around a stadium ban of his own when Chelsea faced Bayern Munich in a Champions League quarterfinal in April 2005 by hiding in a laundry basket to gain access to the home dressing room, while communicating with fitness coach Rui Faria during the match.

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