Croatia boss Slaven Bilic backed me - Martin Taylor

Feb 29 2008 By Colin Tattum, Birmingham Mail

A BRAZILIAN-born naturalised Croatian, Eduardo's international manager Slaven Bilic has stated that he wasn't injured deliberately.

"I'm sure Martin Taylor is a sportsman and he wanted to play the ball," said Bilic.

"On another occasion Eduardo could have received a worse tackle and got away without injury - everything went wrong but Eduardo knows Taylor didn't do it deliberately."

And Taylor said another interview with Bilic confirmed to him what sort of person Eduardo was.

"I saw an interview with Slaven Bilic who said Eduardo wasn’t just a great footballer, he was a great man as well. That’s clear to me too.

"I just hope he and his family can get through it and he can recover. What he has said in the press [absolving Taylor from blame] has been fantastic, it was very noble of him. Hopefully it has calmed the situation and he understands that in football it can happen.

"It was a freak accident and I just think that everyone now needs to concentrate on Eduardo getting better."