Six-month bans and managerial departures: Cagliari and West Ham captains seeking Soccer Sevens redemption in Hong Kong
Nicholas Pennington and Joshua Pask are two of the captains hoping for glory this weekend – for very different reasons
Everyone deserves a second chance and 19-year-old Italian-Australian Nicholas Pennington is no different.
The Cagliari Calcio youth team captain reunites with his teammates in Hong Kong for the HKFC Citi Soccer Sevens after a whirlwind year which saw him banned for six months for an altercation with a referee and later loaned out to a Serie C outfit in Italy.
Pennington was sent off for “threatening and violent conduct” in a reserves match against Palermo in May of last year. The referee had given a second yellow card to a Cagliari teammate for kicking the ball away, infuriating captain Pennington, who lightly pushed the referee and then tried to take the red card out of his hands as it was being brandished.
“I was the captain so I went to talk to the referee, and as I was talking, I touched him,” the midfielder said. “I didn’t do anything much.
“He told me, ‘You don’t have to touch me’ and I said I touched him very gently – not in a bad way – and he sent me off. I got angry but it was the last game of the season. I won’t do anything like that again.”
Pennington’s ban originally lasted until the end of October 2017 but he was retroactively pardoned by the Italian Football Federation.
He was loaned to Olbia Calcio in August, scoring his first professional goal in February this year and establishing himself as a first-team starter.
He returned to Cagliari at the end of the Italian football season and hopes he can set a better example by leading his team to glory this weekend.
