Chelsea invite victim of racist abuse on Paris Metro to Champions League second leg at Stamford Bridge

 

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Rob Harris20 February 2015

Chelsea are planning to invite the black man abused by its supporters at a French metro station before a Champions League game against Paris Saint-Germain this week to Stamford Bridge for the return leg.

The offer came as Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho discussed the Paris incident for the first time, saying Friday: "I feel ashamed with being connected with these sad things."

A group of Chelsea fans were filmed stopping the man from boarding a Paris metro train on Tuesday and then chanting: "We're racist and that's the way we like it."

"We feel very sorry about it," Mourinho said at Chelsea's training ground. "We want to fight it. We feel ashamed and we want to apologize to the gentleman."

The man has been identified as Souleymane S. by Le Parisien newspaper.

"We are writing to Souleymane," Chelsea spokesman Steve Atkins said during Mourinho's press conference. "We are inviting him and his family as guests to the return leg against Paris Saint-Germain (next month). We hope he will take up that offer."

Across London, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who is French, described the incident before the game as "pathetic and dreadful" but said eradicating racism was a wider issue.

"(It is) society's problem," Wenger said. "More intelligent people than myself think about that and nobody has found a miraculous solution, it certainly starts from childhood education and an open-minded attitude.

"There is a danger of having radical people in every society. Since I observed youth movements, there are always certain people who are ready for radical solutions and most of the time you have to control them."

Chelsea suspended three people from its Stamford Bridge stadium as a result of an investigation into the incident, and they could face life bans.

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