Chilean ’keeper angry

Press, 7 September 1989, Page 29

Chilean ’keeper angry

NZPA-Reuter Rio de Janeiro The goalkeeper, Roberto Rojas, has angrily dismissed accusations that he faked the injury that prompted Chile’s World Cup walkout against Brazil on Sunday. Brazilian police have said tests showed he had not been struck by a flare hurled from the crowd. As Rojas protested his innocence in Santiago, two coroner’s officers from the Rio de Janeiro legal medical institute said their examination showed no burns which would have resulted from contact with an explosive.

They said Rojas had a three-centimetre cut above his left eyebrow and a small

wound on his face. “The cut was caused by a razor blade or a small knife,” said a coroner’s officer, Talvane de Moraes. Rojas countered: “It is a joke to think we prepared a show to avoid the match. “Now they want to turn me, the victim, into the accused.” The goalkeeper had been carried from the Maracana stadium pitch with what appeared to be blood streaming down his neck after the sixty-ninth minute incident. The Chileans, trailing 1-0 and needing to win to qualify for next year’s finals in Italy, went off and refused to return. First Chile asked for a replay on a neutral ground but now it has formally de-

manded that the International Football Federation (F.1.F.A.) award it the match. It says Brazil failed to guarantee the team’s safety. Their Brazilian counterparts claim Chile automatically forfeited the tie by refusing to play on after the incident.In Zurich, F.I.F.A. said it had seen film of the match and received the referee’s report but was awaiting photographs before deciding what action to take. Before leaving Rio for Zurich, a F.I.F.A. observer, Augustin Dominguez, of Spain, received five newspaper photographs taken by an Argentine that indicated the explosive hit the ground 1.5 metres away from Rojas.