RENTON, Wash. \u2014 The Belgian soccer federation congratulated J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku on the birth of his son, Praise, on Monday, one day after a French media organization’s apology following a commentator criticizing the player’s intention to leave the World Cup for the birth.<\/p>\n
Doku missed the team’s 0-0 draw against Iran on Sunday because of a respiratory illness, but was cleared to fly back to London so he could be with his wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs he had already been receiving the appropriate medical treatment for several days, he was able to fly without any medical risk in order to be with his family during this very special moment,\u201d Belgium team doctor Brahim Hacene said in a statement. \u201cHe was accompanied by my colleague, Dr. Brecht De Coninck. Everything went perfectly, and the mother, father, and baby are all doing wonderfully. J\u00e9r\u00e9my will rejoin the group tomorrow evening in Seattle.\u201d<\/p>\n
French sports daily L\u2019Equipe disavowed comments by a female commentator who criticized Doku for wanting to leave the World Cup to be at the birth of his first child.<\/p>\n
L\u2019Equipe apologized to Doku in a statement late Sunday and said the comments by France Pierron did not represent its values.<\/p>\n
Pierron described childbirth as \u201ca disgusting moment, excuse me, where the dad is useless\u201d when taking part in the television show \u201cL\u2019Equipe de Choc\u201d on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RENTON, Wash. \u2014 The Belgian soccer federation congratulated J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku on the birth of his son, Praise, on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,3934,1953,1849],"class_list":["post-23360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-soccer","tag-wires-bot","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116796697238333551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}