AC MILAN NEEDED a Chancel Mbemba own goal to draw 1-1 at home to Porto on Wednesday, a result that leaves the seven-time former European champions on the brink of elimination from the Champions League.
Milan are level on points with Napoli at the top of Serie A having won 10 and drawn one of their first 11 games domestically, but it has been a drastically different story in Europe.
Stefano Pioli’s side lost their first three matches in a tough Group B also featuring Liverpool and Atletico Madrid, and another defeat at San Siro would have confirmed their elimination.
Porto, who beat the Italians 1-0 in Portugal two weeks ago, duly went in front inside six minutes thanks to Luis Diaz, who also scored in the reverse fixture.
Marko Grujic won possession before setting up Diaz, the Colombian taking two touches to steady himself before slotting in.
However Milan equalised just after the hour-mark as substitute Pierre Kalulu’s cross-cum-shot was turned into his own net by Mbemba.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic came off the bench for the home side but he could not inspire them to find a winner, although he did have the ball in the net late on only for the offside flag to cut short the celebrations.
Evanilson hit the bar for Porto, who are second in the group but can be overtaken by Atletico if the Spaniards win at Anfield later.
Even finishing third and parachuting into the Europa League is a big ask now for Milan, who are appearing in the Champions League for the first time since 2013-14.
“upset the natural flow of the game”. can’t agree with that. you have lads throwing themselves on the ground left, right and centre which is far more disruptive in my opinion, especially in the bigger knockout games when they’re a goal up. sure they had water breaks in some matches in the last World Cup which went by almost unnoticed. time for the video ref.
Also it should be easy enough to moderate the use of video techology. I.e limit the number of times it can be referred to in a game…. each coach can call for a video replay three times and no more!
About time but I would rather see it use for cheating and simulation
You can nearly tell by looking up that Barcaloni19 page on youtube that you would get 9/11 conspiracy clips in the suggested videos. Short memories, he seems to forget the second leg at Stamford Bridge only the year before.
All club have been stung over the years by bad decisions but when it’s costs a team a trophy/promotion or indeed regelation it can be hard to swallow .
If ever there was a club that benefited from extremely dubious refereeing, Barcelona is it.
The farce at Stamford Bridge
The Thiago Motta red card with Busquets peeking through his hands to see if he could stop rolling around yet
Van Persie’s second yellow for playing the ball after as the whistle was blown
And then from this tie, the Suarez non-red, the Iniesta non-red and the Torres sending off.
You lost all credibility when you said Torres was harshly sent off last week.
In that inter game the goal Barcelona got was actually offside so if they had video ref back then that goal wouldn’t have stood, and also the ridiculous motta red card would never have happened
They weren’t in the video so clearly didn’t happen.
3 for the manager is too many. Its been in hockey for a few years at the high level and only now is it really a very good system without issue of bias or unfair advantage. Currently, each team has one video refferral, which they keep if they are proven correct or in the case of “no decision possible”. When the team refers and they are mistaken, they lose the referral. Teams must refer immediately after the incident (within 3 seconds i think) and it has to be close to a goalscoring event (can’t be at midfield). It goes upstairs to a ref who avails of different camera replays. There are still instances when cameras don’t pick up the incident or it is unclear what happened although football games have so many cameras this might not be an issue. Also, there are still complaints to referees even after video referrals! In football there would be issues surrounding interpretation – handball/ball to hand for instance but these would simply have to be cleared up by rules committees. I think aswell that referees own referrals would be useful but in rugby these are taken too much in my opinion. The system works well, there is usually 3 or 4 refferals a game and they are swift and exciting. I think it would work. 6 a game would be hefty and would lead to a scenario whereby there would be a refferal by a winning defensive team over a free kick the last minute purely to waste time/stop momentum type of thing. This is not attractive to see.
Trust no one
Didn’t need last night to prove this. Just the last 30 years of diving, cheating, handballs etc etc etc