‘A big mistake by the referee’… Benfica coach unhappy with referee decisions after seeing his side lose to Barcelona | OneFootball

FC Barcelona paved their way to the UEFA Champions League Round of 16 with a win over Benfica in the League Phase last night. But even more than the confirmation of their presence in the next round of the competition, the Blaugrana fans would have been happier with the way last night’s match unfolded.

The Benfica striker Vangelis Pavlidis scored a first-half hat-trick to take his side into the half-time with a 3-1 lead. However, the Catalans returned to the pitch in the second half with renewed spirits, and despite the momentary disappointment of a Ronald Araujo own goal, they continued to attack and ultimately got a 4-5 victory with Raphinha scoring his last goal in 90+6th minute.

Naturally, the Benfica coach, Bruno Lage, was quite disappointed with such a loss and admitted that his team was feeling quite frustrated. However, as SPORT has reported, he also blamed the referee for his team’s loss to some extent:

“Then I have to analyze the match and look at what happened in the 94th minute… I believe it was a big mistake by the referee. I’m not just speaking for myself or the fans, but I’ve noticed that all the experts nationally clearly agree it was a penalty. The fact is, the referee in these situations needs to apply a consistent criterion for penalties—whether it’s Barcelona’s or ours.”

“Look at this one… if he awarded the others, he necessarily had to award this one too. Then, we got caught up in the emotion of asking for the penalty, but we needed to stop the play with a foul. We cannot allow a Barcelona player to run through the center of the pitch and score the goal.”

Photo by Alex Pantling – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images

At the end of the day, such refereeing mistakes are a part and parcel of the game, and it is quite frequent for teams to feel aggrieved by some decisions that go against them.

Only in their last game against Getafe, Barcelona felt that they should gotten a penalty for a foul on Kounde, with both Flick and Laporta publicly chastising the referee after the match. Anyway, the Blaugranes will now have to ensure they return to form in La Liga as they face Valencia in their next game on Sunday.