Football
ESPN staff 6y

Jamie Carragher suspended by Sky Sports after spitting incident

Jamie Carragher has been suspended by Sky Sports and will not appear on the broadcast of "Monday Night Football" for the game between Stoke City and Manchester City after a man filmed the analyst spitting at his car.

The act was filmed by a man who taunted the former Liverpool and England defender following Manchester United's 2-1 victory against Liverpool on Saturday.

Carragher, 40, objected to the taunts by the man, who remains unidentified, and responded by spitting at his car. The spit hit a 14-year-old girl in the passenger seat of the car.

In an appearance on Sky News, Carragher said he has spoken to both the man and his daughter by telephone and again apologised for his actions.

"A moment of madness, really," Carragher said. "It is difficult for me to explain. Watching those clips back, it feels almost like an out-of-body thing -- a moment of madness for four or five seconds. No matter what the circumstances [are] for anyone, you can't ever behave like that. It is just unacceptable."

Gary Neville, Carragher's co-analyst on Sky Sports broadcasts, said on his Twitter account that he hoped the pair would continue to work together but did not defend his conduct.

Former Liverpool teammate Danny Murphy told talkSPORT on Monday that Carragher had grown frustrated with repeated taunts from United fans while driving, causing him to lash out, but when asked on Sky News why he did it, Carragher had no answer.

"You're actually thinking to yourself, 'Why did you react like that?'" Carragher said. "Because that's part of being a public figure. Different things get said but you don't react like that. That's the only time I've ever reacted like that. Again, I've just got no excuse. It's devastating for the family involved, and I think about my own family. It's down to my actions that's brought that on."

Carragher, who has worked as an analyst for the network since he retired in 2013, said he has a daughter around the same age as the girl in the car and said her involvement is what bothers him most.

"That is my biggest sort of regret," Carragher said. "There's lot of regrets what happened, but certainly the biggest one is for the 14-year-old to be sort of caught in the middle of this and my altercation with the father. That probably devastates me a little bit more than anything else, really, that a young girl who wasn't involved in anything, really, has now become embroiled in this.

"In that position, I've got a daughter exactly the same age as [her] and if someone were doing that, I [think] of the ways I would react or what I would say to the person if I ever bumped into them because the way that father sees his daughter is the way I see my daughter."

Later on Monday, Sky Sports cut their Monday Night Football show by half an hour following Carragher's suspension.

Coverage of Manchester City's Premier League trip to Stoke was due to start at 7 p.m. loacl time from Sky's studio in London.

However, with Carragher no longer appearing on the show, the decision was made to move filming to Stoke's bet365 Stadium with a later start time of 7.30 p.m.

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