Glen Kamara says he would walk off the field if it happened again, one year after the Ondrej Kudelo incident

Rangers midfielder Glen Kamara revealed in an interview with Sky Sports that he is still the target of racist abuse after an incident with Ondrej Kudelo last year and said he would now walk off the pitch if a similar situation were to happen again.

18. on March 2021, Prague Slavia took on Rangers in the Europa League semi-finals. Much has been written about what did or did not happen on the pitch at the time. Glen Kamara accused Ondrej Kudelka of a racial slur and then physically attacked him in the tunnel.

At the time, Kúdela was sentenced by UEFA to ten matches for racist behaviour and Kamara to three matches for physical assault. Both Kúdela and Kamara’s prosecutions in Scotland were dropped earlier this month. Kúdela then also completed the process of appealing his ten-match sentence at the International Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Now a year on, Kamara has reflected on what happened from his perspective in the first place.

“I think there was a foul on one of their players right in front of me and everybody shouted at each other immediately. I just told Kudel to be quiet.”

“He told me ‘shut up’ and I said ‘oh, big man’, I was just joking. I mean, nothing ever happens on the field. Then he came over and whispered in my ear what he whispered to me, and I responded. I think everyone can see the shock on my face when it happened. My teammate Bongani Zungu was there and heard it.”

After that, coach Steve Gerrard reportedly spoke to Kamara and asked him if he wanted to leave the pitch, saying he would support him in doing so. But he was not receptive, he was humiliated and embarrassed.

He would have acted differently today. If a similar incident happened again in the future, he would leave the pitch. He would have wished that UEFA had to decide whether to expel the team for racism or let them move on.

He is still feeling the effects of the incident to this day. “I remember going back to one of the burger shops my friend owns and a guy came in and took a couple of looks at me and said, ‘you’re the guy who was racially abused’. I was like, “Yeah, yeah, that’s me. But he didn’t recognise me for football, he just recognised me for the situation.”

Sky Sports