Chiellini apologises to Riqui Puig for calling him a "clown"

Los Angeles Football Club's Giorgio Chiellini gave his thoughts on 'El Trafico', the name given to the Los Angeles derby between the two Major League Soccer teams, and apologised to Riqui Puig for calling him a "clown" in the last derby, although he blamed the former Barca player for disrespecting his club.

"It's going to be a beautiful atmosphere (...). I hope we can beat the record number of fans at a game in this league. It would be incredible," said the Italian on Monday, who alluded to the possibility that, with 80,000 spectators, the record for Charlotte-Galaxy in 2022, which had 74,749 fans, could be broken.

The veteran LAFC defender also took the opportunity to publicly apologise to Puig for calling him a "clown" after the last game against the Galaxy, when he insulted the Spaniard in the tunnels of the stadium for celebrating a goal by taking off his shirt and showing his number to LAFC fans in an image very similar to Messi's in 2017 celebrating an epic 2-3 win in Barcelona's added time at Real Madrid. 

"I want to close this issue. To be honest, I want to apologise to him because I shouldn't have said that to him in front of the media. I spoke to him after the game and after I shouted at him because I think he disrespected our team. This rivalry doesn't need this and we players have to dedicate ourselves to playing and the fans to cheering," he said in his apology.