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The football test match between Qatar and New Zealand in the Austrian capital Vienna was halted at half-time. The reason for this would have been a commotion on the field. New Zealand international Michael Boxall is said to have been racially insulted by an opponent in the first half.

The New Zealanders then decided not to enter the field for the second round. The game therefore ended with the score of 1:0 for the “Kiwis”.

“Nobody Can Understand That”

Qatari national coach Carlos Queiroz gave Qatari television channel Al Kass a few insights into what happened around the abandonment of the game: “At half-time, the New Zealand captain came to us surprisingly and said they had decided not to go back on the game. pitch.”

Queiroz only partially noted the on-pitch dispute between Boxall and the Qatari player: “Two players had an altercation on the pitch. Only the two of them know who started and who reacted. The New Zealand players chose to support their player and our players chose to support their fellow player. (…) You have decided to abandon the game. There were no witnesses, the referee and the benches did not hear. This is a new chapter in football that no one can understand.”

The New Zealand association in turn announced via Twitter that the team had decided to stop the game due to the failure of the neutral parties – which probably meant, among other things, the team of referees.

It is still unclear what will happen next: “This matter will certainly be investigated by FIFA”, Queiroz suspected. The 70-year-old has only been national coach of Qatar since the beginning of the year. Last winter he played for Iran at the World Cup.

Another match canceled in Austria

Also in Austria, in Bad Radkersburg in Styria, a similar incident apparently happened on the same day: as announced by the Football Association of Ireland, a friendly match between the Irish U21 and the U22 from Kuwait was abandoned.

According to Irish sources, a similar incident occurred during a friendly match between Ireland’s U21s and Kuwait’s U22s, which was also played in Austria (in Bad Radkersburg/Styria).

The association tweeted after the match: “The FAI regrets to announce that tonight’s U21 international match against Kuwait has been canceled after a Kuwaiti player made a racist remark against one of our substitutes.”

They will not tolerate racism against their own players or employees and will report this serious matter to FIFA and UEFA, it said.

The Kuwaiti Football Federation apparently saw things differently: a statement later posted to Twitter said that the match was not completed due to “hardness and excessive tension between the players”, according to the director of the Kuwaiti Olympic football team.

(t-online/paint)