Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
PEP’S REF RAGE
Bad decisions have cost us, says Guardiola Boss stunned by chief Riley after meeting
WHEN Pep Guardiola met with referees’ boss Mike Riley in January, the Manchester City manager was hoping it would give him a better grasp of English football.
His conclusion, however, was that it was just a waste of time.
Guardiola was looking to understand how a team like his could be near the bottom of the Fair Play table.
This after they dominated possession stats and committed fewer fouls than most teams in the Premier League.
He also wanted to know why his players were being denied so many game-changing decisions in season-defining matches.
So when Professional Game Match Officials Ltd (PGMOL) chief Riley accepted a request from the Catalan to meet at City’s Eihad campus, Guardiola asked his club’s technical department to compile a DVD of contentious incidents so that he could gauge the former FIFA referee’s opinion.
In the words of a high-level City source, “Mike Riley just sat there just nodding his head in agreement with what Pep was saying.
“But he offered no kind of explanation as to how so many elite referees could get so many big decisions wrong.
“By the end of the meeting, Pep was none the wiser. He felt like it was nothing more than a box-ticking exercise, a waste of time.”
Guardiola’s meeting with Riley – and City’s complaint that they have repeatedly suffered at the hands of inconsistent officials – will be taken into account when the club’s Abu Dhabi owners undertake their annual review in the coming weeks.
There is some agreement in the Etihad boardroom that Guardiola’s first season in English football could have been very different.
And, particularly, if a series of refereeing errors had not cost them valuable points in huge games against title rivals Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool and Arsenal.
Their FA Cup semi-final defeat to Arsenal saw David Silva clattered out of the game, then referee Craig Pawson disallowed a Sergio Aguero goal when his assistant Steve Child wrongly ruled that a Leroy Sane cross had gone out of play.
A City dressing-room insider said: “There’s widespread support from the dressing room about the complaints Pep has raised with the authorities.
“We’ve seen a string of decisions go against us this season – but it’s not just about us being the victims of a series of clangers by the match officials.
“We’ve seen David Silva getting no protection from the officials.
“Take that Arsenal game, he gets badly fouled by Gabriel. It was a challenge that could easily have provoked a red card or, at least, a yellow. Yet, Gabriel got away with it and he kicked David out of the match.
“We keep hearing refs are going to protect the skilful ball players, yet that’s not what we see – and Silva is just the victim of the worst tackles, we’ve got plenty of other examples as well.”
In the Champions League, Aguero was denied a penalty and booked for diving by Spanish referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz when Monaco keeper Danijel Subasic should have been sent off.
City won the game 5-3, but lost the last-16 tie on away goals.
Guardiola has kept his counsel about match officials, because of his experiences as a player and coach in Spain.
The belief that there was an institutional bias among referees towards Real Madrid was a big part of his education when he was coming through the ranks at Barca’s famous La Masia academy. One close confidant of the Catalan revealed: “Pep was
taught that you couldn’t just beat Madrid by being better than them – you had to be much, much better than them, so that you could take bad refereeing out of the equation.
“That was a big part of Johan Cruyff’s philosophy and it has guided Pep as a player and coach.
“Cruyff would say that, if you continually complain about referees, then people eventually stop listening and you get a reputation of being someone who moans every time you lose.
“Pep has spent a lot of time this season trying to get that message across to City players.
“There have been times when players have lost their discipline because referees have made game-changing mistakes – like when Aguero and Fernandinho were sent off against Chelsea.
“Of course, it was much easier for Pep to overcome bad referees at Barcelona – because he had Lionel Messi.”
Guardiola’s private belief that fitness levels of match officials needs to be improved is even more applicable in the highintensity Premier League.
But when Bacary Sagna was fined £40,000 by the FA for tweeting City had “played against 12 men” during the 2-1 victory over Burnley in January, it illustrated just how deep the frustration at the Etihad runs.