Advertisement

Hazard charged over ball boy

The Football Association has charged Chelsea`s Eden Hazard with violent conduct following an incident with a Swansea ball boy. It said in a statement that a "standard punishment that would otherwise apply was clearly insufficient".

Benitez talks on Hazard's reaction to ball boy incident

Ahead of the Football Association's decision to charge midfielder Edin Hazard, Chelsea's Football Club interim manager spoke about how the player reacted in training.

When pressed on the ball boy incident, Rafa Benitez said: "For us we lost a player the other day and we couldn't score. We had ten players with one injured on the pitch."

Benitez refused to be drawn further on what happened, but a club spokesman said: "The club on the evening recognised the seriousness of the incident, the player recognised that he was wrong to react in that way. The appropriate apologies were made. The club made every effort to make those happen.

"Edin recognised it quickly and those apologies were made and they were accepted. He made those apologies privately in the dressing room. He made a public apology and Rafa dealt with it in the press conference."

Rafa Benitez went on to answer questions on how Hazard has been responding in training and whether the incident had affected the player mentally.