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Angel di Maria was forced to be substituted midway through Paris Saint-Germain’s Ligue 1 clash on Sunday after being informed of his family being victim of an ‘extremely violent robbery’, media reports claimed on Monday. The Argentine was taken into the dressing room by his PSG manager Mauricio Pochettino just after the hour mark before the winger left Parc des Princes.
In a surreal turn of events, PSG director Leonardo was seen attending a call on his mobile before communicating about the emergency to Pochettino who quickly replaced Di Maria while accompanying his countryman to the dressing room. Leonardo later revealed that there was break-in at Di Maria’s home with his family present.
There were unconfirmed reports in the French media that the footballer’s wife and children were kidnapped for a brief period of time. The police are investigating the matter with PSG offering their full support.
There were reports that a similar incident had occurred at Di Maria’s PSG teammate Marquinhos with his parents’ house being burgled.
PSG went on to lose their match to Nantes with Pochettino admitting the club is dealing with more pressing matters other than the final result. “It’s not an excuse but there was a drop in energy,” Pochettino said of his team’s performance. “We talked about things other than football after the game in the locker room. The truth is that the first period we controlled the match, but after the equalizer, we had trouble and we were not strong enough to hang onto this match.”
This is not the first time that Di Maria has had to go through such a harrowing experience. During his time with Manchester United in Premier League, there was an attempted burglary at his house in Cheshire which later contributed to him leaving Old Trafford for PSG.
The 33-year-old had recently renewed his contract with PSG by another year.
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