China send seven U-21 players home after brawl

Seven China under-21 internationals have been sent home early from the Chelsea training centre as the mass brawl with Queens Park Rangers players dominated Chinese media yesterday.

Defender Zheng Tao ended up in hospital with a fractured jaw after Wednesday's melee, which caused the friendly between China's Olympic team for next year's Beijing Games and the English Championship club to be abandoned.

Despite apologies from the visiting party on Thursday, the majority view in the Chinese media was that both parties were to blame for the fight. "Equal brutality," read the banner headline in the People's Daily, the Beijing News had "Olympic team purging, Gao expelled", while the Beijing Times put the blame on the CFA with their: "The father should be blamed for the son's fault".

Beijing Youth Daily's "Fight in Europe" is a play on words in Chinese.

Shanghai Shenhua striker Gao Lin, whose attack on an opponent at the west London club's training ground sparked off the trouble, will be joined on the plane by six other players from Shenhua, Dalian Shide and Shandong Luneng, Sina.com reported.

The Chinese Football Association (CFA) told the news portal that the clubs had already requested the release of these players to help preparations for the new Chinese season and the Asian Champions League.

In China, the CFA have remained silent on the matter and their official website carried only a report on the senior team's 2-1 victory over Kazakhstan, which also took place on Wednesday.

Sports ministry paper China Sports Daily called for perspective in an editorial entitled "It's only a game".

"Now it's happened, we should forget about it. It was not a war, and need not be regarded as seriously as a diplomatic issue. Soccer will continue, friendlies, will continue . . . How to prevent this is something that really needs to be worked on."

QPR chairman Gianni Paladini admitted he felt "sick" after the mass brawl. Pictures of the fight, which led to the game's abandonment, were broadcast repeatedly yesterday, much to the embarrassment of the west Londoners and the tourists, who have issued their own apology.

Paladini has vowed to investigate the incident thoroughly. He said: "I am sick about the whole thing. I am completely fed up. There is a code of conduct at this club, and life is about how you behave." Paladini added: "We will go to work 24 hours a day to find out what happened."