Austria beat North Macedonia 3-1 on Sunday in Euro 2020, in one of the more exciting matches of the tournament so far.
During the match, Marko Arnautovic, who is still registered with Shanghai Port, looked to be hurling abuse towards Leeds United’s Ezgjan Alioski.
It wasn’t an entirely surprisingly event, given some of the controversies throughout Arnautovic’s career. He was clearly quite happy to be playing the big-man with one of the smallest players on the pitch, and had it been left there it would just be another example of how the forward is.
After the match came claims of racism, and North Macedonia urged UEFA to look into what had happened, after earlier signals there’d be no investigation. The country also insisted Arnautovic should be given the toughest punishment possible if he’d been found to use prejudiced language.
Alioski has now spoken himself at a national team press conference, and it’s clear the Leeds player wants it to be left to UEFA to deal with, rather than down to him to make accusations to the media.
Bild quote the Leeds man as saying: “I don’t know what he told me. His words were hard to understand against the background noise. There are things like that in every game. The most important thing is that we shook hands in the end. That was all clear.
“Uefa has video recordings of the scene that they will look at and analyze. The Uefa authorities have to decide how things will continue. “
