Photo: Manuel Pellegrini (AFP)
A furious Manuel Pelligrini 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 previous tie involving the Catalan club.
Photo: Manuel Pellegrini (AFP)
A furious Manuel Pelligrini 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 previous tie involving the Catalan club.
The match Pellegrini referred to was a quarter-final two years ago at the San Siro between Barcelona and Milan that ended goalless, with former coach Pep Guardiola complaining about two penalties Eriksson failed to award to 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 thought the referee was not impartial to both teams. The contact was outside the box and it was not a penalty.”
Pellegrini walked on the field 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 censure for his remarks.
Manchester City will be hard pressed to get back in the tie with a 2 goal deficit to overcome in the away game at the Nou Camp.
Some content in this article was taken from the “Telegrapy”
Writer: Andre Stephens
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