New York Red Bulls was tied with Sporting Kansas City in the closing moments of their match on Sunday night when Red Bulls player Kaku, frustrated with either a bad pass or the Kansas City crowd, rocketed a ball from point blank range into the front row.
The ball struck a fan in the face, reportedly bloodying the patron.
Several Kansas City fans swarmed around Kaku, whose full name is Alejandro Romero Gamarra, after the incident, and Kaku was eventually shown a red card for the offense.
After the match, Kaku took to Twitter to apologize, writing: “I apologize to the @SportingKC fans, my teammates, @MLS and to all @NewYorkRedBulls supporters.”
Here’s video of the incident:
After the match, Red Bulls also issued a statement.
The New York Red Bulls organization does not condone the type of behavior displayed near the end of Sunday night’s match in Kansas City. We hold everyone in our organization to a high standard of conduct. The matter will continue to be discussed internally and we will have no further comment at this time.
According to some of the Red Bulls players there, they believed that Kaku was trying to fire the ball off the boards, but not into the fans.
Red Bulls midfielder Daniel Royer said Kaku did not intend to strike the fan with the ball but “definitely meant to hit the board” below the first row of seats. Coach Chris Armas said he thought Kaku was upset at a misplaced pass moments earlier.
After the incident and after the final whistle, several Red Bulls players went over to the stands to check on the injured fan.
