Porto slam referees, hit out at Hjulmand: “Shocking impunity” | OneFootball

FC Porto vehemently criticized Sporting on Tuesday in the Dragões Diário newsletter, regarding the match against Famalicão, which Sporting won 1-0, a game where a goal by Famalicão was disallowed when the score was still 0-0.

“After another round of the championship, FC Porto remains ahead of an opponent forbidden by decree to lose points. The team most benefited by the unfortunate errors of the referees was once again carried on the shoulders against FC Famalicão – once again disadvantaged against Sporting, after the forgiven expulsion of Gonçalo Inácio in the first round match. Unlike what happened in the Azores, when Rui Borges, still stuck in the last century, didn’t know how to work with new technologies, this time the Sporting coach learned quickly and resorted to the tablet placed in front of his eyes to review the images and defend the existence of a ‘clear foul’ on Maxi Araújo,” it reads.

The club also recalls a message from the National Technical Director of Refereeing, quoting the words of Roberto Rosetti, and includes the intervention of the president of the UEFA Refereeing Committee: “I think we forgot the reason why VAR was introduced. Eight years ago I went to London to discuss the meaning of VAR and we talked about clear and obvious errors. Technology works very well in factual decisions. In interpretations, subjective assessment is more difficult (…) We cannot continue on this path of microscopic VAR interventions. When you are watching a play in super slow motion, you always find something,” explained the president of the UEFA Refereeing Committee, quoted in the newsletter.

The blues and whites also lament a “sports season marked by unfortunate cases always in favor of the same ones,” also pointing to Morten Hjulmand and a pattern of VAR decisions that, they say, has systematically benefited the same club. The text suggests that the intervention in Famalicão’s clean goal was motivated by previous episodes, such as Hjulmand’s fall in the Azores, and denounces impunity in violent plays and simulations that go unpunished. FC Porto assures that, without its intervention, the Disciplinary Council would have ignored certain episodes and that relevant images, including those from bodycams, seem to disappear.

“Meanwhile, the usual acquittals of Frederico Varandas continue, an unimpeachable figure in the eyes of the Disciplinary Council (and any court), after disparaging the President of the Portuguese Football Federation as a minor figure in refereeing at the service of other presidents in the past. In this specific case, it seems that crime pays, because from mapping club colors of the FPF’s social bodies, to placing pawns in the Non-Permanent Refereeing Commissions and accumulating rhetoric about refereeing, the truth is that, since the famous outburst after the game in Guimarães, Sporting accumulates plays that will surely appear on the list of errors not to be made, so that in the future refereeing is better. None of this is surprising, just as the complicit silence on the other side of the Second Circular – which clamors for even more penalties – in this Holy Alliance that aims to try to bring down FC Porto in every way. FC Porto remains focused and united and, in a traditionally difficult field, achieved its 19th victory in 22 rounds with a precise header by Jan Bednarek after a cross from Gabri Veiga,” concludes FC Porto.

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