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Brazilian winger Kenedy has been sent back to London from Chelsea’s pre-season tour of China following offensive comments on his social media.
The player has been requested by Chelsea management to pack his bags after putting up two offensive posts on his social media which caused uproar and great offence in China.
The imprudent Kenedy posted a photo and a video to his Instagram last Friday, which resulted in this particular embarrassing episode for The Blues.
The first was a fairly random profanity about China and the second was a photo of a sleeping security guard who he proceeded to mock with the accompanying caption. And despite swiftly deleting both posts it was too late, the damage had already been done.
The player was booed by large sections of the crowd during Chelsea’s 3-0 win over Arsenal, and it’s safe to say that Kennedy’s posts didn’t go down well with the Chinese media either. One newspaper said that his posts were both “impolite”, “uneducated” and that the player “has created an incident which has humiliated China”.
Chelsea issued a long public apology saying, “We offer this apology with utmost sincerity. We have listened carefully to the criticism and will use the lessons learnt over the last two days to improve our processes in future”.
The foolhardy player also made some attempt to make amends by also posting an apology on his social media after deleting the posts.
However the management believe that it’s appropriate for the player to return to the club’s training centre Cobham, where he will complete the rest of his pre-season preparation. The player flew home on Tuesday and is likely to be fined by the club in the coming days.