Soccer Captain Jailed For Headbutting Opponent Team’s Player During Heated Match

A friendly football match between two teams turned unfriendly towards the end, resulting in a fractured nose and four weeks’ jail time.

31-year-old Nicholas Amet Wen Cai was sentenced to four weeks’ jail on Monday, 7 September, for one charge of voluntarily causing hurt.

He is the coach and captain of amateur football team FC138, and they were playing a match with Ranger United, another amateur team, on 17 February 2019 at East Spring Secondary School.

Everything was going smoothly until the last 5 minutes of the game.

Argument Breaks Out Over Foul Play

A heated argument broke out between players from both teams, due to a foul from a player on Amet’s team.

The players started to push and shove each other in the middle of the field, and a video of the incident ended up being posted online.

At the start, Amet was trying to protect his teammates by pushing away the players from Ranger United.

The referee also told the men to stop fighting, but obviously, a group of angry men were not going to pay much attention to that.

“It all kicked off then and I tried to stop the fight but couldn’t. So I just stepped away and told the field warden to call the police,” said the referee to CNA.

Victim Was Headbutted On His Face

The situation got more heated when a goalkeeper from Ranger United ran towards an FC138 player and aimed a jump kick at him.

Amet then stood face-to-face with Yang Yanhua, the 34-year-old victim.

Both of them were swearing aggressively and pushing one another, and Amet headbutted the victim on his face, which caused him to fall to the ground.

“Amet was no longer behaving in a defensive manner but was instead observed to be aggressive towards the victim,” said Deputy Public Prosecutor Derek Ee.

Yang was bleeding profusely and he was unconscious when the police arrived at the scene. Amet and his teammates had fled the field by then.

After the incident, Yang was taken to Changi General Hospital with a fracture of his nasal bone, swelling and a laceration on his eyebrow.

Although it could have been an accident, Amet ended up admitting that he headbutted him with the intention to hurt him.

He said that the victim was “standing close to him” and he was “feeling angry and agitated in the heat of the moment”.

For voluntarily causing hurt, he could have been jailed for up to two years, fined up to S$5,000, or both.

Moral of the story? Keep your cool no matter what because, well, ‘I was angry’ isn’t a good excuse for hurting anybody. Nothing really is, actually.

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