{"id":1671,"date":"2026-04-02T11:18:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T11:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/?p=1671"},"modified":"2026-04-02T11:18:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T11:18:31","slug":"arsenals-katie-mccabe-releases-statement-after-controversial-hair-pull-vs-chelsea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/?p=1671","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal\u2019s Katie McCabe releases statement after controversial hair-pull vs Chelsea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>At A Glance:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Arsenal Women secured themselves a spot in the Champions League semi-finals on Wednesday.<\/li>\n<li>Katie McCabe pulled the hair of Alyssa Thompson \u2013 and has released a statement.<\/li>\n<li>Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor has fumed about the decision.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p>Arsenal Women booked themselves a spot in the semi-finals of the Champions League on Wednesday night despite losing 1-0 to Chelsea Women \u2013 and Katie McCabe has apologised for pulling the hair of Alyssa Thompson.<\/p>\n<p>At Stamford Bridge, Chelsea\u2019s Sjoeke Nusken scored the solitary goal in Arsenal\u2019s narrow defeat to their Women\u2019s Super League rivals.<\/p>\n<p>But their earlier tie \u2013 a 3-1 victory at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday 24 March \u2013 has secured the Gunners passage into the next round. Reigning champions Arsenal emerged triumphant on aggregate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read More: <\/strong>Arsenal in \u2018pole position\u2019 for \u20ac100m Christian Kofane, his agent reveals<\/p>\n<p>In what was a rather drab match in terms of the talent on offer, McCabe was counting her lucky stars after escaping a red card for an obvious pull on Thompson\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Katie McCabe claims hair pull on Alyssa Thompson was unintentional<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>McCabe, the captain of Ireland\u2019s women\u2019s team, didn\u2019t even receive a yellow card for her offence and those on VAR didn\u2019t tell referee Frida Mia Klarlund to send her off.<\/p>\n<p>Sonia Bompastor, Chelsea Women\u2019s head coach, was furious on the sidelines that McCabe was allowed to continue playing.<\/p>\n<p>The hair-pulling incident took place late on in the second leg of Arsenal\u2019s all-London Champions League encounter with Chelsea as Thompson broke down her side\u2019s left flank.<\/p>\n<p>She managed to initially escape the grasp of McCabe, who was keen to not allow Thompson go free on the left. <strong>You can watch the incident below:<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"\/>\n<p>In a desperate attempt to the thwart the American, footage shows McCabe pulling her opponent\u2019s hair. Amid criticism, the 30-year-old took to Instagram to cool tensions. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just want to clarify that I was genuinely reaching for the shirt, I wouldn\u2019t ever want to pull someone\u2019s hair,\u201d she wrote before adding, \u201cFull respect to (Alyssa) Thompson.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The typical result in a player pulling the hair of an opposing player is a red card \u2013 as evidenced by Joao Neves\u2019 early shower against Chelsea in the Club World Cup final in the summer. <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Bompastor fumes at referee decision not to send McCabe off<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Because McCabe wasn\u2019t sent off, Bompastor became full of anger on the side of the pitch. Such a reaction earned Bompastor a caution and she was eventually sent off for further protests. <\/p>\n<p>In the wake of the match, which saw her side dumped out of Europe\u2019s top table, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesun.ie\/sport\/16767933\/katie-mccabe-hair-pull-chelsea-alyssa-thompson-arsenal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">she didn\u2019t hold back in her assessment of the incident<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI brought the phone with me, I don\u2019t know if you can see that. But if you look at the video, for me it\u2019s clearly the red card for the Arsenal player. She\u2019s pulling Alyssa\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I think for me, if the VAR again is not able to check that situation, I don\u2019t know why we have the VAR,\u201d the Chelsea Women boss added, per <em>The Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"\/>\n<p>Still frustrated, she continued: \u201cIn the moment, I was emotional because I think it\u2019s clear for everyone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can probably understand the referees sometimes can\u2019t see that, but I don\u2019t understand \u2013 and it\u2019s not been the first time now \u2013 why the VAR is not checking that situation?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are they not going back to that, checking and having a clear call on that? Because the impact on my player she was emotional. At the end, I\u2019m the one who gets a red card, where I think the Arsenal player should be the one who gets a red card.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At A Glance: Arsenal Women secured themselves a spot in the Champions League semi-finals on Wednesday. Katie McCabe pulled the hair of Alyssa Thompson \u2013 and has released a statement. Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor has fumed about the decision. Arsenal Women booked themselves a spot in the semi-finals of the Champions League on Wednesday night [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}