In an extremely rare act of intolerance, a football official has been banned for life for assaulting a referee that the world governing body of the sport FIFA has welcomed with open arms.
The permanently banned official has been named as Faruk Koca who was the president of a football club in Turkey and who assaulted an international referee Halil Umet Meler after a domestic match early this week.
Koca was the head of a football club in Turkey known as MKE Ankaragucu which has been fined 54,000 Euros and ordered to play five matches behind closed doors as part of the punishment.
Unable to put up with violence against a world acclaimed FIFA refer, the Turkish Football Federation suspended all its League matches until the middle of next week following Monday’s incident.
Referee Meler fell to the ground after he was punched by Koca following the culmination of a domestic match and received several blows from others before he was rushed to hospital.
“The incident was totally unacceptable and violence has no place in our sport or society”, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said.
Koca resigned from the club after his life ban and in a statement apologized for his actions that brought football in Turkey to disrepute.
“No matter how great an injustice or how wrong the officiating was, nothing can legitimise or explain the violence that I perpetrated,” he said. “I apologise to the Turkish refereeing community, the sports public and our nation. It was a great embarrassment and a grave incident that I caused”.
