Former Tottenham Hotspur defender Mauricio Taricco has become embroiled in major controversy after being punished for making a racist gesture while coaching in South Korea.<\/p>\n
Taricco first moved to England in 1994 with Ipswich Town before Tottenham signed him in 1998. The Argentine spent six years at White Hart Lane, playing 130 games and scoring twice. He later had short stints at West Ham and Brighton before transitioning into coaching, serving as an assistant at clubs including Sunderland, AEK Athens and Real Betis.<\/p>\n
Now 52, Taricco has been working as assistant manager at Jeonbuk Motors since last year. According to The Independent, he landed in serious trouble after making a racist gesture during a match against Daejeon Hana Citizen on November 8.<\/p>\n
He reportedly clashed with the referee over a penalty decision, shouting \u201cracista\u201d before making a slanted-eye gesture. Taricco argued that he was trying to indicate the referee hadn\u2019t seen a handball clearly, but the K-League dismissed his explanation, stating the gesture matched a widely recognised racist slur targeting Asians.<\/p>\n
As a result, the disciplinary committee issued a five-match suspension and fined him 20 million won \u2014 roughly \u00a312,000 \u2014 stressing that actions should be judged by their universal meaning, not just the individual\u2019s claimed intent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Tottenham Hotspur defender Mauricio Taricco has become embroiled in major controversy after being punished for making a racist gesture while coaching in South Korea. Taricco first moved to England in 1994 with Ipswich Town before Tottenham signed him in 1998. The Argentine spent six years at White Hart Lane, playing 130 games and scoring …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":54998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/8f9e9db912964d62da14854048577234.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55024,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55023\/revisions\/55024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}