After Famalicão draw, Rui Costa blasts ref: Came to hurt Benfica | OneFootball

Rui Costa did not hide his displeasure with what he saw on the pitch between Benfica and Famalicão. In the aftermath of the 2-2 draw against Hugo Oliveira’s side, the Eagles’ president spoke to the media, where he delivered harsh criticism of the match officiating and claimed that Gustavo Correia tried to 'harm' Benfica. You can find the full statements here.

"I want to express my indignation, and that of all Benfica supporters, over everything that happened here today. I think it won’t take many words for you to agree with me about all the key incidents in this match, which are clearly unacceptable. I believe, especially because I was a player, that no one has the right to decide who wins championships, who goes to the Champions League, other than the players and coaches on the pitch, and what happened here today was not that," began the Eagles’ president.

"The same referee who in the first half of the season gave a penalty against Casa Pia at home, which had nothing to do with this one and which everyone recognized was not a penalty, and today failed to see this penalty. He had already failed to spot the first penalty, which really was a penalty, and VAR had to call him over to award it. A crystal-clear penalty. The move for Famalicão’s second goal came from a corner that was never a corner," added Rui Costa, targeting Gustavo Correia’s refereeing.

"There is no other way to put it: this man came here to harm Benfica. And finally, to top it all off, he gave Ríos a yellow card that rules him out of the game against Sp. Braga, something even Ríos cannot explain, the referee cannot explain, and you probably do not have any image showing why Ríos was booked and will miss the game against Braga. That is what happened here today," accused the club’s top official.

"What happened here today was an attempt to hold us back on that path. We reached this position on merit, by recovering the points we had dropped to get back to 2nd place. We got here on our own merit. Today they wanted to take us out of next year’s competition here. , even with the incidents that took place here today," Rui Costa concluded.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.