{"id":3094,"date":"2014-03-28T13:58:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-28T13:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=3094"},"modified":"2014-03-28T13:58:49","modified_gmt":"2014-03-28T13:58:49","slug":"fa-investigates-video-footage-for-spit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/fa-investigates-video-footage-for-spit\/","title":{"rendered":"FA Investigates Video Footage For Spit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The FA have confirmed they are looking into the footage which appears to show Marouane Fellaini spitting towards Pablo Zabaleta during Tuesday’s Manchester derby.<\/p>\n

The United midfielder was booked by referee Michael Oliver for a first-half elbow in the face of his City opponent.<\/p>\n

However, with Zabaleta stricken on the turf, Fellaini appears to spit at the Argentine immediately after being shown the yellow card.<\/p>\n

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The \u00a328million summer signing was unrepentant about the elbow on the defender.<\/p>\n

‘I don’t know, but I certainly didn’t do it on purpose,’ said Fellaini when asked about the incident that saw him pick up a just yellow card.<\/p>\n

‘I put my arm up to try and protect possession of the ball, and Zabaleta bounced (his jaw) against it. He was unlucky to make contact.<\/p>\n

‘The movement by me was not in an aggressive manner. It was a defensive move to protect the ball.’<\/p>\n

The FA could now look into the incident in much the same way as they did when retrospective punishment was served on Hull City’s George Boyd earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Television cameras caught the forward spitting towards goalkeeper Joe Hart during Manchester City’s 2-0 win at the KC Stadium.<\/p>\n

Boyd was subsequently banned for three matches despite appealing against the charge and protesting his innocence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The FA have confirmed they are looking into the footage which appears to show Marouane Fellaini spitting towards Pablo Zabaleta during Tuesday’s Manchester derby. The United midfielder was booked by referee Michael Oliver for a first-half elbow in the face of his City opponent. However, with Zabaleta stricken on the turf, Fellaini appears to spit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3104,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions\/3104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}