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Belgium midfielder has police called on him by people who think he’s a terrorist
It was a bad day to be Radja Nainggolan.
Claudio Villa/Getty Images
After Belgium’s friendly with Spain was cancelled, Roma midfielder Radja Nainggolan was hanging out at his hotel in Antwerp, waiting for his flight back to Italy. Some extremely weird racist people saw him, thought he might be a terrorist, and called the police.
This could have gone very poorly and been extremely inconvenient if the police hadn’t recognized him. So Nainggolan posed for pictures with the cops and everyone went about their day.
Goal of the day
In the news
A former Barca president thinks Cristiano Ronaldo should leave Real Madrid. Wonder why? (AS)
PSG will be wearing jerseys that say “Je suis Paris” this weekend. (@PSG_English)
Daniel Sturridge is back, but Jürgen Klopp doesn’t think he’ll risk him against Manchester City. (Guardian)
Sergio Aguero, however, is going to come back from his injury against Liverpool. (ESPN FC)
Gigi Buffon will play against Milan this weekend despite suffering an injury on Italy duty. (Football Italia)
Bayer Leverkusen star Lars Bender has returned to training. (Bundesliga)
Arsene Wenger says Laurent Koscielny was badly affected by the Paris attacks and might not play this weekend. (Telegraph)
Transparency International says FIFA’s member confederations and federations are awful at transparency. (AP)
You should be reading
Les Carpenter on FC Dallas’ academy and homegrown stars. (Guardian)
Matt Gault on the footballing culture of Belfast. (These Football Times)
Dustin Ward on how to measure defense statistically. It’s hard. (Stats Bomb)
There was no major soccer of consequence on Wednesday, and there’s none again on Thursday. Top club soccer returns on Friday.
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