Ban Lifted For Chelsea Man

Back in September, Chelsea defender Slobodan Rajkovic was given a year’s suspension for allegedly spitting in the direction of a referee.

The young Serbian had just been given a red card in a game against Argentina and apparently didn’t entirely agree with the decision. Still, there’s ways and means to go about these disputes and spitting at a ref probably isn’t the smartest one to be honest.

So, the lad was heading for trouble really. And the fact that the whole thing happened at the Olympics just seemed to magnify how much trouble he was in – so a one year ban was the outcome. A bit harsh you might think? Well, so did Rajkovic and FC Twente, where the Chelsea defender has been on loan since the summer, and so last month they made the decision to lodge an appeal.

Well the good news is, the ban has been lifted although the bad news for Serbia, is that it hasn’t been lifted for internationals. So whilst Rajkovic can now play Eredivisie games, he still won’t be able to feature for his country for the remainder of the ban.

Following the ruling, 19 year old Rajkovic stated “I am very pleased with this ruling. I look forward to playing in competitions for FC Twente. It is good that I have always been training in recent months and can now join the group. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone at the club for their support at this difficult time. It remains, of course, extremely annoying that I have no matches to play next year for Serbia.”

Still, Steve McClaren’s happy enough, saying “First of all I am obviously very happy for Slobodan personally. He has put a very difficult and unpleasant time behing him. FC Twente can now have this talented defender again.”

So commonsense prevails sometimes then?