Valencia coach Javier Gracia said after the 2-1 defeat in Cádiz that, “seeing that there was a sanction option” after the withdrawal of his team from the field in the 32nd minute, after Mouctar Diakhaby assured them who had received a racist insult, the French player himself asked them to continue “playing”.
“The player was very nervous. We have chosen to go to the dressing room and have been informed that if we did not return, we would be sanctioned. We have told Diakhaby how he was and he told us that he was not here to play, but he understood that we had to return with the intention of achieving a victory, with one more reason to fight it, “he declared at a press conference.
Gracia explained that, after what happened, they tried “to calm down” the situation and also “to comment on it with the player, and seeing that there was a sanction option, (the French central defender) asked us to continue playing and we told him that we supported him ”, he specified.
The Valencian coach indicated that the Catalan referee David Medié Jiménez told them that “he had no record of what had happened, he had not heard anything, neither he nor his assistants, and in this situation he has been forced to continue the game.”
Diakhaby was changed after the incident, but Cádiz central Juan Cala remained on the field, when the game was resumed, until he was replaced at halftime by Argentine Marcos Mauro -author of Cádiz's second goal-, a circumstance about the that was also pronounced Grace.
“I have commented to the fourth official that, within what has happened, they understand that we have protected the player who has been attacked, so that no more damage is caused, and we do not understand that the player who has caused that was still on the field” , he asserted.
The Cádiz-Valencia meeting was interrupted, from minute 29, for about twenty-five minutes, when the Valencian players decided to leave the field of play, which became effective in minute 32, due to the alleged racist insult of the cadista Juan Cala to Mouctar Diakhaby, according to the complaint made by the club che.