An Argentine football player has caused outrage after admitting he used a needle to hurt his rivals during a Cup match against top division club Estudiantes on Sunday.
Federico Allende, a defender for lower division club Sport Pacifico, bragged in a radio interview about using the needle several times against strikers from top-division club Estudiantes.
Allende said players had to be clever in order to win.
Pacifico’s president Hector Moncada has however vowed to expel the player.
“We are devastated. This incident has tarnished the team’s good work. I will expel him from the club,” Moncada said in an interview.
Pacifico won the match 3-2, knocking Estudiantes out of the competition in a major upset.
The players were received like heroes in the small western town of General Alvear when they returned from Buenos Aires, where the match was played.
But the good atmosphere soon turned into bad news.
Allende gave Cordoba’s Vorterix Radio an interview on Tuesday in which he said “you need to play dirty’’ to beat big clubs like Estudiantes de La Plata.
“I kept piercing the Estudiantes strikers with a needle,’’ said the Pacifico defender.
“We know that top division players don’t like contact, they don’t like if we waste time or if we play dirty. So that was the way to do it. Football is like that. Football is for the clever,’’ Allende said.
Reports had it that Allende had hidden two needles in his shin guards.
One broke but, when the referee was at the other end of the field, Allende used the other to poke Colombian striker Juan Otero several times.
Otero had complained to the referee during the match, but it was all to no avail.
Allende said on the radio: “I completely nullified Otero. He must hate me.’’
After hearing the interview, Otero described Allende as “a nasty man’’.