Tell me how after getting the ball cleanly, he's meant to get his leg out of the way? Or alternatively how he's meant to get the ball cleanly from his starting position without having his leg extended? It's an impossibility. The ref tonight was a disgrace. Worst performance I've seen in a long time.
We were supposed to have one of the best refs in the game, he correctly sent off half of all the players dismissed in the World Cup. But given he is from Slovenia, why was he chosen to ref an Italian team game in Europe? It's literally next door to them, and he gave them pretty much everything he could.
Despite that, we survived. There was only one away win in the group and it went right to the wire. As is often the case in a group like this, having the last game at home helps the home side sneak over the line. And we got there on goals scored, that's how tight it was.
Great winner from Salah, his 13th goal of the season and 4th in 2 games, although I didn't think it would be the winner at the time, so had a good laugh at the Napoli fan bawling his eyes out before ht. Then Dejan came on. Surely he couldn't do much wrong in 5 minutes. Unfortunately he couldn't do much right. First, he hashed a weak clearance out of play, then dozed off as he does, and left his man unmarked to put the ball in the net, until Alisson showed us again why the money we paid for him was well spent. Amazing how a 6 game group can come down to a split second like that. Hopefully we'll get a nice comfy draw in the next round, and hopefully we're not down to the bare bones at the back after the game. Because we can't exactly rest players at home against the mancs you know.
So ends the years of refs making educated guesses about decisions in the European Cup, and also the end of the refs behind the goal. From now on, it's VAR all the way, home and away. Every penalty call and goal scored is now subject to VAR approval, and the ref can now have more than one look at an incident if required, even refs from Slovenia.
Logged