Tiago Silva to António Nobre: “Erring for one side is no coincidence” | OneFootball

FC Porto once again showed authority in the title race by beating Sporting de Braga 2-1 on matchday 27 of the Liga Portugal Betclic. After falling behind, the Porto side turned the game around and remain comfortably ahead at the top of the league.

Even so, despite the win, the match was marked by controversy, particularly over refereeing decisions that prompted a strong reaction from Tiago Silva, an FC Porto supporter and TV pundit.

The Porto fan began by rejecting the idea that these were isolated mistakes: “Today I’m not going to talk about refereeing errors. I’m going to talk about a system,” he wrote, suggesting there is a recurring pattern in the decisions.

“Always making mistakes in the same direction is no longer a coincidence”

Tiago Silva backs up his view with several incidents from the match in Braga. One of the first moments he mentioned came in the 26th minute, when Zaidu was allegedly pushed near the edge of the opposition box.

“António Nobre was right on top of the play, saw what we all saw and decided to ignore it: a dangerous free-kick was not given, and a yellow card that would have been Niakaté’s first was not shown,” he criticized.

Shortly afterwards, the pundit pointed to a lack of consistency in the referee’s criteria when awarding a penalty in Braga’s favor: “Half an hour later, the same referee had ‘eagle eyes’ to spot a trivial tug in FC Porto’s box and turn it into a penalty.”

For Tiago Silva, these incidents should not be viewed in isolation. “The problem wasn’t mistakes. It was the pattern. Making mistakes many times, but always in the same direction,” he stressed, also adding an incident in the 61st minute, in which he believes a hard challenge on Varela went unpunished with the proper disciplinary sanction.

“We’re talking about a system, not refereeing”

The FC Porto supporter went further and framed the referee’s performance within a broader context. “When there’s a pattern like this, we’re no longer talking about refereeing. We’re talking about a system,” he said.

Tiago Silva also recalled previous matches to support his argument, stating that the same referee “had already spared Sporting two red cards in games that were level at the time.”

In that sense, he also criticized the appointment for such a decisive match: “Whoever appoints a referee with this track record for a game with an impact on the title race had a duty to know this could happen.”

Despite the criticism, the pundit highlighted FC Porto’s response on the pitch: “Fortunately for us, FC Porto neither gave up nor accepted the fate they were trying to hand them.”

With this win, FC Porto remain firmly at the top of the league and strengthen their title bid, in a match where, for some, more than football was at issue.

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