Photo: Manuel Pellegrini (AFP)
A furious Manuel Pellegrini accused referee Jonas Eriksson of deciding Barcelona’s 2-0 win over Manchester City in the Champions league by rectifying mistakes made when officiating a pervious tie involving the Catalan club.
Photo: Manuel Pellegrini (AFP)
A furious Manuel Pellegrini accused referee Jonas Eriksson of deciding Barcelona’s 2-0 win over Manchester City in the Champions league by rectifying mistakes made when officiating a pervious tie involving the Catalan club.
The match Pelligrini referred to was a quarter-final two years ago at San Siro between Barcelona and Milan that ended goalless, with former coach, Pep Guardiola, complaining about two penalties Eriksson failed to award his side.
After Barca won Tuesday’s last-16 opening leg at the Etihad, Pellegrini claimed that Martin Demichelis’s second-half challenge on Lionel Messi was not a penalty and the central defender should not have been sent off.
Eriksson awarded the penalty when Demichelis tried to tackle Messi in a challenge that may have started marginally outside the area. Asked what his view of the incident was, Pellegrini said: “the referee decided the game. From the beginning I felt the referee was not impartial to both teams. The contact was outside the box it was not a penalty”.
Pellegrini walked on the pitch at the end of the match to confront the Swedish official. “It was just to tell him he decided the game. I was not happy because he decided the game” said the manager, who could face Uefa censure for his remarks.
Some content from this article was taken from the “Telegraph”
Writer: Andre Stephens
You must be logged in to post a comment Login