The Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper has been speaking about an incident that happened after the final whistle of the defeat to Chelsea
Guglielmo Vicario claims he had to protect Spurs teenager Lucas Bergvall from "a bad person" among the fans at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Nineteen-year-old Bergvall lasted just four minutes of Spurs' derby defeat to Chelsea on Saturday. Blues midfielder Enzo Fernandez accidentally smashed the ball into the back of the Swede's head, causing the youngster to fall to the floor before wobbling back to his feet.
Despite his protestations, the Tottenham doctors decided Bergvall had to come off and tests later confirmed the teenager was concussed.
After the game, the midfielder walked around the pitch applauding the fans but goalkeeper Vicario soon spotted he was being abused by someone in the south stand at the club's home.
The Italian pushed the teen away towards the tunnel and could be seen to repeatedly gesture back towards the supporter, pointing to him and then to his own eyes in an "I see you" motion as he left the arena.
"In every environment there are very good people and some bad people. Probably [Lucas] had contact with one bad person," Vicario told football.london. "That doesn’t necessarily say that everyone is a bad person.
"But there are some bad people in every environment and I had to protect Lucas because he was a little bit emotional in that moment. It’s part of my experience to do that, and we can discuss it inside the dressing-room and not outside."
Bergvall will now miss Spurs' next two games against Copenhagen in the Champions League on Tuesday night and Manchester United in the Premier League on Saturday while he goes through the concussion protocol.
Without the young Swede, Vicario and Tottenham will be looking to turn around their bizarre home form.
In the Premier League the north London side have won just three out of 19 matches in the past 12 months at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but in European competition the club are unbeaten in 21 home matches stretching back to 2020 with 17 victories amongst that.
The domestic home form has caused plenty of frustration among the fanbase and led to plenty of boos during matches as well as at the half-time and full-time whistles.
"It's normal. I was a fan when I was a kid and going to the stadium I saw many of these things," said Vicario. "Probably in Italy it's also a little bit worse when you go, so I have big shoulders about that, it's not a big problem.
"It's like when you go to the theatre and you see a show and you don't like it and you express your reactions, your feelings. The main thing is for us to concentrate on what we have to do on the pitch, because it's on us to turn around the situation."
Vicario explained that the players have spoken about their poor showing against Chelsea and admitted that everyone involved can be better amid the boos from the stands.
"We have spoken. I think probably in some moments during the game … probably when we are chasing, we need to have a little more cool heads and if we have a little bit more help from some situations coming from the stands it could be, of course, better, but we cannot control it," said the goalkeeper.
"At the end, of course, everyone was disappointed. We had lost a London derby so everyone was really frustrated, and we get the reaction of the fans at the end of the game. They can express their pain and we were of course in a big pain situation so that’s across every stadium in the world, in Europe, in the UK. So we get the point. We were just disappointed with the result."