Randy Abbey, a spokesman from Ghana's team, apologised today for the "naive" reaction of Ghana's defender John Paintsil and said that it was not done "out of malice" for the Palestinian people, while FIFA sees no problem with the incident.

The Hapoel Tel Aviv player, who was waving an Israeli flag he had hidden after Ghana's two goals were scored, was seen by Palestinians and Arabs as an insult to the just cause of the Palestine political issue. After several complaints were made at Ghana's Football Association, the team dismissed Paintsil's move as "naive".

"He is obviously unaware of the implications of what he did. He's unaware of international politics. We apologise to anybody who was offended and we promise that it will never happen again."

"We are not in support or against Israel or the Arab nations. We are here to do football, we are not here to do politics."

"He did not act out of malice for the Arab people or in support of Israel. He was naive... we don't need to punish him," Randy Abbey said.

In a statement which contradicts FIFA's earlier position on the subject of politics and football, a spokesman from the World Football governing body said that he saw nothing wrong in Paintsil's action.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | google | yahoo | technorati