San Jose Costa Rica
goalkeeper Keylor Navas (PSG, France) He lost a defamation suit he filed against two former Costa Rican football leaders, although he will receive about $ 5,000 in civil damages, a San José court ruled on Friday.
Navas, along with Bryan Ruiz (Alajuelense) and Celso Borges (Deportivo La Coruña), sued managers Adrián Gutiérrez and Juan Carlos Román for saying in an interview that the players threatened to lose games to him. fired the then coach from Tico, Colombian Jorge Luis Pinto in 2014.
The alleged threat would have occurred in a hearing whose “there are no minutes, it was not broadcast, only the footballers and managers were there,” the court said, according to La Nación newspaper published on its website.
Navas’ request is based on an interview given by Gutiérrez in 2018, where he talked about the alleged intentions of the players on their return from the World Cup in Brazil 2014, against their coach.
According to La Nación, the court considered that the leaders had committed a “prohibition error”, ie they acted believing that the comments made were not illegal.
Navas and his colleagues, who admitted that they did not agree with Pinto on an apparent excess, denied that they had conspired against him.
The leaders’ claims were confirmed in the process by the former president of Costa Rican football, Eduardo Li, who mentioned an alleged clause in the contract that allowed Pinto to be fired if he lost 3 consecutive games.
He went on to say that Navas and his colleagues threatened to lose all three games.
For his part, Colombian DT, who testified online as a witness in the trial, said Li warned him about the players’ intentions. But, according to the crhoy.com portal, he denied signing a contract with this clause.
In the end, the court agreed with the original contract and did not find what Li said.
“What denies Li is the existence of the clause and such a clause did not exist in the contract,” said the court, which recommended prosecution for “lying under oath.”
The former Costa Rican football chief has already been involved in a corruption scandal that affected FIFA, and in 2017 he was disqualified for life to hold positions in the institution.
Despite losing the lawsuit, the court recommended that Navas and his colleagues receive the equivalent of $ 5,000 each in civil damages, far less than the nearly $ 60,000 they had originally claimed.