Italian pundit and former referee Graziano Cesari called the decision to award a penalty and red card for Fikayo Tomori’s tough on Mason Mount ‘complete madness’ as Chelsea beat 10-man Milan.
The incident was only 18 minutes into the match at San Siro and inevitably transformed the whole course of the evening.
Jorginho converted the penalty and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang then met a Mount through ball.
It all goes back to the red card and speaking on Mediaset Infinity, refereeing pundit Cesari was damning in his analysis of German official Daniel Siebert.
“It’s completely incomprehensible. The intensity of Tomori’s touch on the shoulder is not strong enough to cause a penalty.
“The referee says that Tomori held Mount, but the images do not show that. Tomori’s hands never grip Mount, you cannot call that a tug. It is at best a touch, and Mount is allowed to continue and shoot.
“It was complete madness from Siebert. As for VAR, they are not allowed to judge the intensity of contact. The fact is, the referee already had the whistle in his mouth on the first touch on Mount’s shoulder, it is a non-existent penalty.”
The replays do show that Tomori twice touched Mount’s shoulder, but had let go some considerable time before the Chelsea player got his shot away.
It is hard therefore to consider that touch to be preventing a clear scoring opportunity and red card.
There are certain teams that Uefa cannot see not qualifying for the next round as it hurts revenue. EPL and La Liga teams and PSG. A draw or defeat today for Chelsea would have left qualification hanging in a balance for them. So the ref decided to decide the match himself on the first opportunity he got. It is as simple as that. There is no other explanation for the fact that this has happened repeatedly to AC Milan against – Arsenal, Manchester United, Atletico Madird and now Chelsea.
@ Andy Conspiracy theories aside Tomori should not have put himself in that position and it was probably a penalty and he always risked being sent off. So all round stupid on his part. Milan have choked in the two Chelsea games. Hopefully we can recover in the next two.