Dorival: Corinthians played well but referee decision was absurd | OneFootball

Dorival Júnior lashed out at the refereeing after the draw between Corinthians and Internacional this Wednesday at Beira-Rio, for the 26th round of the Brazilian Championship. The coach, who was sent off in the final stretch of the match, complained about the controversial penalty that denied Timão the victory at the last minute.

Dorival felt that the team played a good match in Porto Alegre, but had their performance harmed by the referee Rodrigo Pereira de Lima. He recalled other possible mistakes by referees against Corinthians and believes the team should be in a better position in the standings.

“We don’t want to take advantage of anything or anyone. Our team has already had 14 unfavorable VAR decisions. Unfortunately, today we had another absurd decision. I don’t like to talk about refereeing. On Sunday we had a clear mistake, and I didn’t say a word. The big problem is that today Corinthians could have seven or ten more points in the competition. This same referee gave an absurd penalty in the match against Vasco. Congratulations to him for the confusion he created. He gave five minutes of stoppage time, put the whistle to his mouth to end the match when the throw-in was taken, but continued. Mr. Gilberto Rodrigues, from VAR, managed to see a penalty in the last minute. He tried to give the goal that was disallowed, was looking for a way to harm us and found it. We missed out on points here. We’re following a well-defined plan, and I’m very proud to see my team fight the way we did, just like we did against Flamengo. We got our result today, suffered little, and were not under pressure,” vented the coach.

“The game went on normally, it was simple to referee, but unfortunately there was direct interference from VAR and Rodrigo Pereira. It’s an absurd, regrettable situation, and we leave here without important points. We, players and coaches, are under extreme pressure. It’s time for these responsibilities to be shared. In the weekend game and the next one, I’ll be out because of the card I received, but he [the referee] will be there officiating another match, creating new confusion. It’s regrettable what we saw today,” he added.

Modified lineup

Dorival also explained the changes he made to Corinthians’ lineup. He left some starters on the bench, such as Matheus Bidu and José Martínez, and justified the changes as being due to physical reasons.

“If you want vitality, you can’t repeat this team. In the previous match, we had a full week. Flamengo played midweek and had to rotate. There’s no way. We’ll be on the field again in two and a half days. We’ll travel at dawn and arrive at the training center at 4 a.m. We’ll start recovery right here in the locker room. There’s no other way. We do tests every day to be sure about who will be on the field. We did them this morning to have all possible results. Everyone can see that the players are coming in trained, conditioned, knowing their roles, and trying to execute,” he said.

“The game plan was well defined and well executed. We had the flanks to exploit, and that happened. We managed good ball exits, interesting work with link-up play and triangles. We scored the goal in a situation we had trained. It’s regrettable the way we dropped important points here. An inelegant situation from the refereeing committee, they were not up to the spectacle,” he concluded.

Position in the standings

With the result, Corinthians jumps up one spot and now occupies 13th place in the standings, with 30 points earned.

Corinthians’ next match

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