Paris St-Germain full-back Serge Aurier has been stopped from entering the United Kingdom by authorities before Wednesday\u2019s Champions League match at Arsenal.<\/p>\n
The Ivorian, 23, was given a two-month suspended prison sentence in September for assaulting a police officer.<\/p>\n
PSG say UK authorities granted Aurier a visa in October but revoked it on 16 November, citing his conviction.<\/p>\n
The French champions said the timing of the ruling showed \u201ca lack of respect\u201d.<\/p>\n
But in a statement, the Home Office said: \u201cThe immigration rules clearly state that non-EU nationals who have received a custodial sentence of less than 12 months within the last five years will be refused on criminality grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aurier is appealing his conviction, leading PSG to believe he is entitled to be presumed innocent.
\n\u201cParis Saint-Germain strongly regrets that the presumption of innocence has not influenced Britain\u2019s decision,\u201d said the French champions in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn several occasions, Uefa has also transmitted its total support of Paris Saint-Germain to the British authorities regarding this case, in order to preserve the integrity of its competitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
PSG added that they \u201cdeplore\u201d the timing of the final decision.<\/p>\n
Aurier was applying for a Tier 2 Sportsperson visa, which allows an individual to stay in a country for up to three years and typically takes three weeks to process.<\/p>\n
The defender, who has played 40 times for PSG since making his loan deal from Toulouse permanent last year, is accused of elbowing a police officer outside a Paris nightclub in May.<\/p>\n
In addition to his suspended sentence, he was fined \u20ac600 (\u00a3521).<\/p>\n
His side go into Wednesday\u2019s meeting at Emirates Stadium second in Group A, level on 10 points with leaders Arsenal with both clubs assured of a place in the knockout stages.<\/p>\n
Credit:BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris St-Germain full-back Serge Aurier has been stopped from entering the United Kingdom by authorities before Wednesday\u2019s Champions League match at Arsenal. The Ivorian, 23, was given a two-month suspended prison sentence in September for assaulting a police officer. PSG say UK authorities granted Aurier a visa in October but revoked it on 16 November, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":270792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1345],"tags":[564,1240,13833],"class_list":["post-270790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing","tag-citi-sports","tag-ghana-sports","tag-serge-aurier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}