BANGKOK // Thailand on Wednesday denied a father’s claim that a boy chosen as a mascot for Chelsea had been forced to make way for the prime minister’s son.
A government spokesman said the list of mascots for Wednesday’s pre-season friendly in Bangkok had been drawn up months in advance, rejecting comments by the boy’s father. “Everything was done according to procedure,” the spokesman said. “There is no way other names were taken off.”
Kriangyos Sudlapha claims that his son was dumped as a mascot before the game.
Nine-year-old Noppadol Sudlapha was in line to walk out with the Chelsea players for Wednesday's friendly and had already gone through pre-match rehearsals, Kriangyos told the Bangkok Post.
But Noppadol and several other children were told that they had been taken off the list of mascots in favour of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s son and the children of five other cabinet ministers. Kriangyos said that his boy was upset by the slight and no longer wanted to see the game between the English Premier League giants and the Singha All-Star XI at Rajamangala Stadium.
An official from sponsors Singha, which is organising the match, said parents had been free to apply for their children to be mascots, but not all had been successful.
But the official, who did not want to be named, acknowledged that most of the mascots were the children of VIPs or Singha executives.
According to another report, Yingluck’s 11-year-old son Supasek Amornchat was also among the children who took part in Chelsea’s coaching clinic this week led by star players.
"It was a lot of fun," he said, according to The Nation.
– Agence France-Presse
