A : when he’s a time-wasting, attention-hungry little twerp who acts like being kicked repeatedly in the ribs is some kind of big deal. The Guardian’s Dominic Fifield on Chelsea’s classy reaction following their League Cup semi-final exit at Swansea :
“They have apologised to each other,” said Rafael Benítez, Chelsea’s interim manager. “They knew they were both wrong. He was wasting time. (Eden) Hazard wanted to get the ball back quickly and he was kicking. They both made mistakes. They both accept they were wrong, and we can’t change things. We will deal with this internally. He was frustrated and just wanted to get the ball back, but we will analyse it and see what happens.”
“Do you think we are not disappointed with the situation, that we don’t regret what’s happened? They apologised. You cannot change things. We cannot. They both made a mistake. The player spoke with the boy and said sorry because there was a mistake. Listen to me: as Chelsea FC, we know it was a mistake, we talk with the boy, we talk with the player. The boy was there with us in the dressing room. Everyone was very clear.” Morgan has worked as a ballboy at Swansea for six years and had claimed on his Twitter account before kick-off that this would be his final appearance in the role as he stepped in for a colleague.
He had even boasted he would be stationed behind the home goal and was “needed for time-wasting”. The teenager had 11,000 followers at the final whistle, with that number swelling to 40,000 an hour after the end of the game. Chelsea’s official Twitter feed had initially suggested the red card was unjustified. “Has football gone mad?” they wrote. “Hazard is sent off for kicking the ball under a ballboy attempting to smother the ball rather than return it.” They later apologised for that tweet.