New Everton appointment could reopen old wounds

Everton earlier today announced the appointment of Luis Boa Morte as the assistant to Marco Silva, with the pair having formerly worked together at Sporting Lisbon.

However, eagle-eyed Blues have noted that Boa Morte, who spent time in the Premier League previously playing for Arsenal, Southampton, Fulham and West Ham United also has had a run-in with another assistant on Silva’s staff.

Following a 1-1 draw between Everton and Fulham in an FA Cup fourth-round game in the 2003-04 season, Boa Morte claimed that Duncan Ferguson had racially abused him.

The Portuguese winger was quoted as saying that towards the end of the game when the Toffees had equalized late, Ferguson had confronted him, pushing and punching him as well.

”Things happened when the referee was giving a yellow card at the other end of the pitch.

“Ferguson just came towards me and started offending me with racist abuse and said something I cannot put up with. He cannot call me a ‘black ****’ while he is playing football. He should at least respect the black players in his team.

”It is something I cannot allow someone to do. I want the FA to investigate. I am really angry about what happened. I have never had to suffer anything like this before in my whole career.”

The Scottish forward vehemently denied using any racist abuse, a claim that was backed up his Everton teammates in following days. Fulham later filed a protest with the Football Association.

For those curious about how the replay turned out two weeks later, Boa Morte created both goals as Fulham dumped out the Blues 2-1. Big Dun missed the game with injury, preventing another further confrontation, but Lee Carsley ensured he had a warm welcome going in with a wild tackles that was quickly repaid by the Cottagers as the game degenerated into a bad-tempered slog.

At the time the Toffees full co-operated with the FA, with then chief executive Mike Dunford adding -

“It is three weeks now since the game and we still have not had anything in writing from the FA.

”I have received a phone call from the FA, and they have said they would like to talk to Duncan. We are now waiting for a date for that meeting, which will probably be in the next 14 days.”

Eventually the investigation was dropped due to a lack of evidence, but it will certainly be interesting to see if the pair have made up their differences when Marco Silva convenes his first coaching team meeting in the next few weeks.