Chelsea player Mason Mount admits he didn’t think the red card was fair to his friend Fikayo Tomori in the Champions League and that early decision ‘ruined the game’ with Milan.
The incident transformed the match at San Siro last night, as just 18 minutes in, Tomori was shown a red card and a penalty awarded for placing his hand twice on Mount’s shoulder as they were running on goal, though he let go some time before the shot was taken.
It was considered to be impeding a clear scoring opportunity, although many pundits in Italy and England insist it was barely even worthy of a spot-kick, let alone dismissal.
Even the players on the pitch from both teams looked stunned at referee Daniel Siebert flashing the red card, including Mount and his former Chelsea Academy graduate Tomori.
“He’s obviously my mate, I’ve known Fik for a very long time and I felt for him in that situation, I was gutted for him,” Mount told the official Chelsea website.
“I don’t think it was a sending off. Was it a penalty? Maybe yes. I’m an honest player and I want to try to score a goal and he pulled me back a little bit, but I feel for him for that decision. It’s a tough one.
“I felt him trying to pull me back but I was running to goal so I wasn’t going to go down and I felt like I could still have an opportunity to score. So I carried on going, didn’t score and then obviously the ref blew up and gave a pen straight away. I was probably a bit surprised at the time because I’ve still gone through and had a shot.
“It was hard to see him get sent off. You still want to be playing 11 v 11 and going at it with two good teams, so it maybe ruined the game a bit. It was massive for us and we obviously wanted to win the game, which we did, but I still feel for Fik a lot.”
It also means Tomori will be suspended for the next Champions League match against Dinamo Zagreb in two weeks’ time, further damaging a side that is already missing Simon Kjaer, Davide Calabria, Alessandro Florenzi, Alexis Saelemaekers and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Anything to screw over an Italian squad, eh? CL doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Milan this year (again). Maybe this will allow them to get that second star above their shield.