Inter Milan were not happy after Liverpool were awarded a controversial penalty in their 1-0 victory at the San Siro on Tuesday
The Inter Milan dressing room were left fuming after Liverpool’s 1-0 win at the San Siro on Tuesday night as two of their players slammed the decision to award the Reds a late penalty. Dominik Szoboszlai scored the winner from the spot in the 88th minute after Alessandro Bastoni was adjudged to have pulled back Florian Wirtz following VAR review.
While the 26-year-old did pull on the German’s shirt, the decision to award the spot-kick did appear soft.
Liverpool were not complaining after being gifted the chance to clinch a valuable three points against last season’s beaten Champions League finalists.
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But while the Reds celebrated a hard-fought victory, coming off the back of a turbulent few days following Mohamed Salah’s explosive comments against Arne Slot and the club, members of the Inter Milan dressing room aired their grievances at the manner of the defeat.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan was adamant that the Serie A outfit did not deserve to lose the game as he raged at the decision to award the penalty.
“I think it was a balanced game and no-one deserved to win tonight,” he said. “The best result was a draw.
“I don’t know how they came up with a penalty that never existed but this is football. We are not happy. If you give a penalty like this, then every contact in the box is a penalty.
“It hurts to lose a match like this, when you fight for 85 minutes and a penalty like that is awarded, but we have to move on. It’s hard to accept, but we need to keep our heads up, work harder, and try to change things in the next two matches.
“Tonight wasn’t our best performance, but we shouldn’t forget that we were up against a top-level opponent. It was a balanced game and, in my opinion, a draw would have been fair, but the referee decided to award a penalty for what felt like a dive.”
Manchester City loanee Manuel Akanji was equally unimpressed, as he called the decision ‘one of the softest penalties I’ve ever seen’.
“It’s tough because in the end we’ve come away with zero points because I think we were the better team,” he told CBS. “We had the better chances and in the end, to concede a penalty like this is tough, it’s tough to lose a game like this.
“The penalty situation, I mean he pulls his shirt, but it’s a soft pull and obviously if you watch everything in slow motion, everything looks far worse than it actually is. The player runs away from the goal and he pulls his shirt a bit and it’s one of the softest penalties I’ve ever seen.
“But in the end we have to be honest, we can’t get in the position to give the referee an opportunity to even whistle for a penalty there. For me it’s never a pen.”
Piotr Zielinski would also share his anger at the decision, saying: “We’re disappointed and angry, because we felt we played well, but perhaps we were just missing that little something in the final third.
“As for the refereeing decisions, I don’t know – on the pitch it never looked like a foul. If those are given, then from now on every challenge in the box will be a penalty.”
But it wasn’t just the Inter Milan dressing room who were left raging at the award of the penalty.
Former England manager Fabio Capello might be a long-time rival of Inter Milan, having both played and coached AS Roma, Juventus and AC Milan during his illustrious career. But that did not stop the 79-year-old from hitting out at the controversial call.
“It’s a scandalous penalty. I don’t understand why VAR had to intervene when the referee had seen everything,” he said on Sky Italia. “The obvious simulation of throwing himself to the ground.
“I don’t understand tonight’s VAR: it took them three minutes to disallow a very clear handball goal.
“They called the referee for pulling his shirt… that way we’d have a million penalties a game. It’s a precedent and it’s shameful.”
