'I think it was a very strong message'

One football story has dominated the news cycle this week - and not for the right reasons.

Paris Saint-Germain's Champions League game against Istanbul Basaksehir was abandoned on Tuesday night after both teams walked off the pitch following an allegation of racist language on the touchline.

And Mikel Arteta has praised the clubs' response to the incident, saying that he would back his players if they chose to react in the same way.

"Absolutely," he said. "If the players believe that is the right thing to do, I will do it and be right behind them.

"I did not hear exactly what happened but I've seen the incident. But after I saw the reaction and the unity that both teams and both clubs showed.

"I'm sure that if it's something that did happen, Uefa will investigate the actions really carefully because we've done a lot of work in recent years to try to avoid this kind of behaviour in football. I think it was a very strong message.

"I don't know if [our players] have [spoken about it] in the dressing room, but we have done around the club and with our staff because it is an incident that has a lot of attention in the media and around our industry. As I said, I hope that Uefa investigate the action really well and then let's see what happens from there."