Pellegrini Blames Manchester City loss on Swedish Referee
Manchester City Manager, Manuel Pellegrini has accused Referee, Jonas Eriksson, of deciding Barcelona’s 2-0 win over Manchester City in the Champions League by rectifying mistakes made when officiating a previous tie involving the Catalan club.
The match Pellegrini referred to was a quarter-final two years ago at San Siro between Barcelona and Milan that ended goalless, with the former coach, Pep Guardiola, complaining about two penalties Eriksson failed to award his side.
After Barça won Tuesday’s last-16 opening leg at the Etihad, Pellegrini claimed that Martín Demichelis’s second-half challenge on Lionel Messi was not a penalty and the central defender should not have been sent off. Eriksson awarded the penalty when Demichelis tried to tackle Messi in a challenge that may have started marginally outside the area.
Asked what his view of the incident was, Pellegrini said: “The referee decided the game. Before the penalty it was a foul on [Jesús] Navas when he [Eriksson] was three metres from the play so he could see it. From the beginning I felt the referee was not impartial to both teams. So he decided the game. And after it was not a penalty, it was outside the box.
“The contact was outside the box, that was the contact. You cannot continue the foul, the first foul was outside the box. But the important mistake is the foul against Navas, the second mistake was the penalty. But it was from the beginning [Eriksson’s impartiality].
“Barcelona did not have chances before the goal. It was a pity because that important action decided the game. Playing 40 minutes with one player less is difficult against Barcelona but we played well with one player less and in the last minute they scored the second goal.”
Pellegrini walked on to the pitch at the end of the match to tell the Swedish official that he was not happy because he decided the game. Pellegrini also said he believed Eriksson was compensating for his perceived mistakes earlier at San Siro.
“I think there is more important football in Europe than Sweden. A big game with two important teams – that kind of game needs a referee with more experience. This referee whistled the Barcelona-Milan game and he made an important error against Barcelona. Today he remedied it.
“Yes, Barça had a lot of the ball but they had it where we wanted. They were not near our area so they did not create in our area. The referee from the beginning did not give a good impression. There was a penalty, we had one player less but the team played with courage.”
Eriksson, who is on the Fifa list for this summer’s World Cup, has been at the centre of other controversies, with the most recent coming during the group stages when he might have sent off Borussia Dortmund’s Robert Lewandowski in Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat at the Emirates.
The Chilean may however face UEFA sanctions, or even a ban, for his coments.
