England midfielder Dele Alli will miss next week’s match against Slovenia after receiving a one-match ban from Fifa for his middle-finger gesture against Slovakia.
The Spurs star has also been fined 5,000 Swiss francs (£3,852), the BBC reports, after Fifa deemed the incident “offensive and unsporting”.
During the match against against Slovakia on 4 September, Alli was caught on camera raising his middle finger, with some pundits saying that it was aimed towards match referee Clement Turpin.
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
At the time the 21-year-old had insisted on Twitter that the gesture “was a joke between me and my good friend Kyle Walker”, but Fifa confirmed that even if it was directed at a team-mate it was in violation of its disciplinary code.
Fifa said in a statement: “Although the disciplinary committee was not convinced that the player directed the gesture at the referee, and regardless of whether it was allegedly directed at a team-mate, it did consider such gesture to be offensive and unsporting. Therefore it amounted to a violation of article 57 of the Fifa disciplinary code.”
Originally named in Gareth Southgate’s 26-man squad for the October double-header, Alli will next be available for the match on 8 October in Lithuania – the final match of England’s World Cup qualifying campaign.