Nearly half a million people have signed an online petition calling for Fifa and Uefa to punish Sergio Ramos for “intentionally hurting Mohamed Salah” in Saturday night’s Champions League final.
During the first half of Real Madrid’s 3-1 victory over Liverpool, Ramos hauled Salah to the ground leaving the Egyptian clutching his shoulder. Salah tried to continue but left the pitch in tears soon afterwards.
The Egypt FA announced that Salah had suffered a sprain of the shoulder ligaments, but there is not yet a timescale on his recovery and the PFA player of the year could now miss the World Cup, which begins on 14 June.
A petition on change.org to see the Madrid captain banned for the challenge has more than 460,000 signatures.
“Sergio Ramos intentionally kept Mohamed Salah’s arm under his armpit, causing dislocation of his shoulder,” claims the petition. “Not only missing the rest of the game, but also missing the Fifa World Cup 2018.
“In addition he kept acting that Liverpool players fouled him falsely, causing the referee to give Manne a yellow card he did not deserve.
“Sergio Ramos represents an awful example to future generations of football players. Instead of winning matches fairly, he uses tricks that defy the spirit of the game and fair play.
“Uefa and Fifa should take measures against Ramos and similar players, using the video recordings of matches to keep the spirit of the game.”
However, plenty of fans and pundits have jumped to Ramos’s defence. Frank Lampard said on BT Sport at half-time: “He’s got close, like any defender should do and sometimes when you get that contact you do interlink arms and it’s more unfortunate in the end, the way he fell.”
Ramos was pictured laughing with an assistant referee as Salah was led away holding his arm but Rio Ferdinand said: “”I wouldn’t associate the two things. I think it was really good defending from Ramos and I don’t think he meant to do that (hurt Salah).”
On Monday it emerged that an Egyptian lawyer was aiming to sue Ramos for £870m. Bassem Wahba accused Ramos of deliberately injuring Salah and inflicting “physical and psychological harm” upon Egypt and the nation’s favourite player.