“I did nudge it with my elbow”- Leeds star Patrick Bamford admits to cheating as he reveals what happened in controversial Elland Road moment last month Vs Rotterham
Patrick Bamford has revealed that he purposely nudged the ball into the net with his elbow in the Leeds United game against Rotherham United.
Speaking on the BBC’s My Mate’s A Footballer podcast on Thursday (21 March), the 30-year-old said he celebrated the goal by tapping his elbow and that the Millers’ players were “going mental” when he looked back towards the box during the Whites’ 3-0 victory on 10 February.
After the referee then questioned the English forward on whether the ball had touched his hand before the match had restarted, he added that he told the official the ball hadn’t touched his hand and didn’t confess that it had come off his elbow.
“At the time, I thought, ‘it’s really close to me, but I can’t quite get it with my body, so I’m just going to nudge it with my elbow and so I did nudge it with my elbow,” said Bamford.
“I thought, ‘that’s really subtle, everyone will think it came off my chest’. I ran off and as I’m running off, I tried to make it look normal. Looked back and their players are going mental. The ref’s given the goal. Stupidly, I did a celebration where I tapped my elbow. The goal was already given.
“Afterwards, we’re walking back to the centre circle – one of their players asked me, ‘did you handball it?’ I said yeah. The ref said, ‘did it touch your hand?’, before it had kicked off again. To be fair, it didn’t touch my hand, it touched my elbow, so I said ‘no, it didn’t touch my hand’.”
It certainly wasn’t a great look for Bamford at the time and he’s probably just made people’s opinion of him worse after opening up on the matter.
At the end of the day, it is cheating and no one really wants to see that kind of thing going on during a game, especially when the score was still level at the time.
While there is a very good chance the Whites would have still gone on to win the game comfortably, the Rotherham players were understandably infuriated by the incident.
It’s not the first time the forward has been involved in a controversial moment as he largely divides the opinion of fans.
But he’s been receiving many plaudits at Elland Road in the second half of this season after an upturn in form has helped him put Daniel Farke’s side in a great position to earn promotion this year.
