BILEL MOHSNI insists he is ready to walk away from football and claims the Scottish Football Association have turned him into a scapegoat.
The former Rangers defender has been banned for seven games for kicking and punching Lee Erwin at the end of the Ibrox club’s 6-1 aggregate defeat to Motherwell in the final of the SPFL Premiership play-off at Fir Park last month.
He returned to Glasgow yesterday to be told by an SFA panel that he has had a three-game suspension for “excessive misconduct” added to the four-match ban already on his record thanks to cumulative disciplinary points.
For Mohsni to serve his suspension, the SFA’s punishment will have to be recognised by his next club’s registering Association, but the French-Tunisian, currently a free agent, has suggested he may quit football altogether.
“You know what? I don’t care any more,” he said. “If a manager trusts me, I will be happy to play for him. If no-one trusts me, it’s okay. I will find a job and work.”
Mohsni insists it is wrong that he has been ruled out of football while Erwin, still celebrating a transfer to Leeds United, escaped with no more than a yellow card after sparking a brawl that also involved Fraser Kerr and Lionel Ainsworth when pushing him in the back because he would not shake hands at the final whistle.
“They had it in their mind to give people an example and it was me,” said Mohsni. “It’s disappointing.
“I thought I would have less. It’s a hard decision when I know the other player has zero and the others that were involved in the fight had just two.
“My reaction wasn’t good, for sure, but to have seven games … between zero, two and seven is a massive gap.
“I’m upset by this – even more by the fact I received seven games and Erwin received
zero. It’s very harsh, but this is life.
“If you see everything on the video, it is clear if he had not pushed me I’d have gone away and would be back in France on holiday right now, not coming back to Glasgow for a hearing.
“This is how it is now. We don’t punish the one who acts, but we punish the one who reacts. Every time it is me who reacts and every time it is me who gets a big punishment. This is my life in football – I’m used to it.”
Mohsni, however, remains unrepentant over launching that furious assault on Erwin that was
condemned in all quarters.
“When I ask all of the people I know what they would do, they all tell me they would react the same way,” he said. “When someone pushes you from the back, it’s like an attack, so you defend yourself. All I did was defend myself.
“It’s not about my anger. It’s about how I react. I reacted because I received aggression. That’s normal. People try to wind me up because they know they are not better than me.
“I can say this to any striker in the world: ‘Take me on and if you are better than me, I will shake your hand and say well done.’
“If you try to wind me up then, yeah, I will react. This is my character. I will not change. When you attack me, I will defend myself, always.”
Mohsni has also criticised the former Rangers manager, Stuart McCall, for stating immediately after the play-off final that the controversial defender would not play for the club again.
“Ally McCoist trusted me and I did very well under him,” said Mohsni. “I scored 12 goals from centre-back, but McCall didn’t trust me. That was disappointing, very disappointing.
“He didn’t think I was good enough to play for him. I played against Queen of the South when we lost 3-0 and he blamed me for the game, so I was like: ‘Wow, this manager doesn’t like me. Okay, no problem’.
“When I heard what he said after the play-off, I was like: ‘Wow, wow, wow’. Normally, every manager protects their player, whether they are wrong or not.
“Him? He didn’t have a job and he was still like: ‘I’m not going to re-sign him’. He didn’t have the job, so why is he speaking?
“After May 31, both of us were out of a job, so it was not his business to speak about me.”