One of the main sponsors of football club Vitesse has called on the Eredisie side to make a public apology for failing to take Israeli defender Dan Mori to Abu Dhabi, the Volkskrant reports on Friday.

The Volkskrant says insurance group Menzis has written to Vitesse director Joost de Wit, saying it is disappointed at the decision to leave the player behind after he was refused entry to the United Arab Emirates because he holds an Israeli passport.

Menzis has over two million clients.

Sponsorship

‘One of the reasons Menzis sponsors football is that football brings people together, regardless of race, belief, sexual orientation and skin colour,’ the insurer’s chairman Roger van Boxtel wrote. ‘Football is based on team spirit, winning and losing together.’

Menzis wants De Wit to make a public apology and to give a written explanation of why the squad left for its winter training camp in the UAE without Mori.

‘I would like to have seen Vitesse make a statement,’ Van Boxtel told the Volkskrant in a telephone interview. ‘Something along the lines of “if one of us is not welcome, then none of us will come”.’

He declined to say how much Menzis pays to the club. Mori only turns out ‘sporadically’ for the premier division team, the Volksrant says.

Visa

Vitesse’s decision to leave Mori behind has been heavily criticised in the Netherlands and abroad. Foreign affairs minister Frans Timmermans said the club should have asked him to intervene when they discovered Mori needed a visa.

Vitesse says it was given verbal assurances Mori would be able to enter the country.The ministry says Vitesse only found out about the visa rule on Saturday, a day before the plane left.

The UAE embassy in the Netherlands has issued a statement saying it never received a visa request.