Charlotte [US], July 13 : Uruguay head coach Marcelo Bielsa defended his players' involvement in the brawl that took place after their semi-final loss against Colombia at the Bank of America Stadium in the ongoing Copa America 2024.
After Colombia punched their ticket to the final against Argentina with a 1-0 win, a scuffle broke out between Uruguay players and Colombia fans.
After the final whistle blew, players could be seen climbing into the stands to fight with Colombia fans in the videos that went viral on social media.
Liverpool forward Darwin Nunez and FC Barcelona defender Ronald Araujo were among the players involved in the brawl.
After the game, Uruguay captain Jose Giminez claimed that players were trying to defend their families.
"One has to speak thinking about all the threats he will receive if he speaks. So, the only thing I can tell you is that the players reacted the same way any human being would," Bielsa said in a prematch news conference as quoted from ESPN.
"If you see what happened happen and there's [no other process to escape] and they are attacking their girlfriends, their mothers, a baby, their wives, their mothers what would you do?" he added.
South American football's governing body, CONMEBOL, has opened an investigation to understand the sequence of events that led to a scuffle between Uruguay players and Colombia fans.
"Are you asking if there's going to be sanctions to the ones that went to defend? It's a level of complicity because the questions also act as a way to accomplice, I don't know if all of you think the same way, if the question you ask wouldn't be made by someone else, but this is what you journalists should be saying, not what I should be saying, with the risk of opening my mouth," he said.
"When you see that there's an overreaction, when you see a violent action, of course, no one is going to be in favour of a violent reaction. But the first thing you have to see is what are they reacting to. And if there was any other way to do it differently, and you all know this, but you want us on this side to open our mouths about it so it's not you who points out what happened and then is affected in any way," he added.
After their 1-0 loss against Colombia, Uruguay will face Canada in the third-place playoff on Saturday.
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