Morgan Schneiderlin has cleared up the confusion over his banishment from Everton training last season. Schneiderlin was one of two players sent home from a training session in November of last year due to a perceived ‘lack of effort’.
It was claimed that both Schneiderlin and Kevin Mirallas were told to no longer take part in training ‘if they were not going to bother’. The midfielder has not spoken about the incident since, but broke his silence in an interview with The Times.
“The sending off was totally my fault. It was a stupid red card,” he said, referring to his sending off in the 3-0 Europa League defeat to Lyon on November 2.
“When we got drawn against Lyons, I thought it was a good way for me to show myself for the France national team and it didn’t happen. We got battered 3-0. I was frustrated. My mistake.
“On the Saturday before Watford, we did a warm-up of five minutes and David [Unsworth] said his squad. I didn’t hear my name.
“There were four or five of us and he said, ‘You are going to train on the other side of the training ground.’ I had played 80 minutes against Lyons – I had run, I was not walking – and Duncan [Ferguson] said, ‘I am going to put you as the man in the middle. You are tired. Don’t worry. I know it is frustrating.’
“As you can understand, the tempo was not crazy because everyone was a bit sad and maybe I didn’t touch the ball because it was two v two.
“Duncan said to me, ‘Morgan, I understand you are tired, you played two days ago. There is no problem, if you want to rest and go inside, you can rest and go inside.’ I said, ‘Thank you’ and I went inside.
“I was not happy, of course. But I was just like maybe 99.9 per cent of the guys are when they are not in the squad and they have to train away from the first team.
“When the story came out, I spoke with David. He said, ‘Morgan, no problem.’ We spoke honestly. I said sorry for my red card, because that is the only thing I could say sorry about. We looked to turn things around and I started the next game.
“Maybe people wanted to see me because we had bad results and they had to find someone to pick and to say, ‘His fault, his fault, his fault.’ That is the life of a football player.”