English football champions Chelsea have apologised to their Chinese fans for offensive comments made on social media by Brazilian player Kenedy and said the midfielder had been disciplined.
Chelsea's Brazilian footballer Kenedy. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
The 21-year-old Kenedy, who signed for the Premier League side in August 2015, made the remarks on his Instagram page at the weekend ahead of Chelsea's preseason friendly against Arsenal in Beijing.
One of the posts was a picture of a security guard asleep which was tagged with: "Wake up China. You idiot." Another carried an expletive in Portuguese. He later deleted the posts.
"Kenedy's actions were a mistake that he will learn greatly from," the club said.
"His behaviour does not represent the entire team and does not align with the club's high expectations and strict requirements of its young players. He has been strongly reprimanded and disciplined.
"Everyone at Chelsea Football Club has the utmost respect and admiration for China and loves our Chinese fans. It is because of this that the negative impact we have seen over the last two days has left us shocked and saddened. Once again, we sincerely apologise for the hurt caused to our Chinese fans as well as to the Chinese people."
Kenedy himself addressed the issue after Chelsea's 3-0 win at the Bird's Nest stadium, in which he was jeered by sections of the crowd, saying he had not intended to cause offence.
Writing on social media, he said: "Hello my friends, just wanna say sorry if someone was sad because I used (that) expression... was no racism, just an expression."
-Reuters
