It’s tough being a Chelsea fan these days. Trust me, my five-year old son cries almost every weekend when I tell him Chelsea lost again. Well, to be fair he doesn’t mind the losing as much as me yelling in his face, “WHO’S THE SPECIAL ONE NOW, MAX? WHO’S THE SPECIAL ONE NOW?!?”
Certainly Jose Mourinho is the one looking less special than he did just last year when Chelsea won the Premier League title. Chelsea sit in 16th place in the 20-team top flight in England after a loss to Stoke on Saturday, with daily rumors about Mourinho’s potential sacking dominating headlines around the world.
And speaking of sacking, it’s not just the Chelsea boss who might get the boot for this year’s poor results. It’s the fans, too.
A Chelsea fan who branded Liverpool supporters “Scouse scum” has been sacked from the international law firm where he worked. Clive O’Connell, who was a partner of Goldberg Segalla, was filmed launching a furious rant after Liverpool’s 3-1 win at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, October 31. [Liverpool Echo]
As rants go, this is one of the milder ones, and yet O’Connell’s words about Mourinho’s future—which came just after the match in which The Special One was ejected for trying to bombard the referees dressing area at halftime—have been resoundingly overshadowed by his “Scouse scum” comment about Liverpool fans.
The attention led to this video being posted by Goldberg Segalla Managing Partner Rick Cohen:
https://youtu.be/l0B_OQIskK8
Looks like someone at the firm is a Liverpool fan.
In all seriousness, the firm has 14 offices with just one outside of the United States, located in the heart of London, some six and a half miles from Stamford Bridge. There are no offices in Liverpool, and there aren’t even any offices in Boston, as my conspiracy-theorizing brain thought perhaps the firm worked with the Boston Red Sox and was thereby playing nice with Liverpool’s owners by sacking O’Connell.
Via Goal.com, O’Connell had apologized after his video went viral last week. Clearly it wasn’t enough.
The clip, published on the same day of the game, quickly went viral, with O’Connell later apologising for his language, telling the Evening Standard: “I was very disappointed in the aftermath of Saturday’s game.
“I let my emotions get the better of me. I clearly regret this and any offence that I may have caused by my hot headed and regrettable reaction, which was inappropriate whether or not caught on camera.”
Conspiracies aside, it seems somewhat harsh to fire someone for having heated feelings after his team got throttled. That said, in 2015 when you speak to a man on the street with a microphone and a camera and you say disrespectful things not just about another club’s fans, but an entire region of your country, you best realize that people will connect the dots to who you are and what you do. To the other partners at Goldberg Segalla, Sullying the company’s brand was enough to get him fired.
Comments are closed.
About Dan Levy
Dan Levy has written a lot of words in a lot of places, most recently as the National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. He was host of The Morning B/Reakaway on Sirius XM's Bleacher Report Radio for the past year, and previously worked at Sporting News and Rutgers University, with a concentration on sports, media and public relations.