The scenes at the end of the Champions League semi-final at Chelsea on Wednesday were deeply regrettable. The anger of the Chelsea players was clear for all to see and hear. Also deeply regrettable was the performance of Norwegian referee Tom Henning Ovrebo, who cost two Barcelona players their place in the final with poor decisions and unbelievably failed to award penalties to Chelsea on two, three, four or five occasions depending on your allegiance to Chelsea.
Remonstrate
As we all saw, following Barcelona’s injury-time tie winner and yet another claim for a Chelsea penalty turned down, Chelsea striker Didier Drogba, who had been substituted due to injury, ran onto the pitch at the final whistle to remonstrate with and confront Ovrebo in a particularly aggressive and threatening manner. Other players, including John Terry, Frank Lampard and Michael Ballack were also guilty of poor behaviour but it was Drogba, who went on to shout and swear into the TV cameras who stole the show.
Drogba and Florent Malouda were dragged away from the referee by stewards and other players and some reports suggest that Ovrebo had to run back onto the pitch after being angrily confronted again in the players tunnel.
Drogba was clearly shouting that the referee was a “f**king disgrace” who should not be respected.
Action
In relation to any action that may be taken against Drogba, other individuals or Chelsea, a Uefa spokesman said: “We will see the report from the referee and match delegate before deciding whether to take any action or not.”
The reason for the anger of the Chelsea players was obvious to all and they had a right to be bitterly disappointed with the handling of the game by the officials. The question is, did they have any right to behave in the way they did?
Captain
Chelsea and England captain John Terry obviously believes that they did. Speaking to the BBC Terry totally defended the actions of Drogba,
“I am fully behind Didier for the way he reacted. The man wants to win. You can see the passion that he played with during the game and the passion afterwards. People are saying we shouldn’t have reacted the way we did but the fact is, six decisions went against us in front of 40,000 people. And for the ref to not give one of them is unusual.”
Is that an appropriate reaction from any captain of a national football side?
Terry also complained about the appointment of such an inexperienced referee for such a big game,
“We get a referee who has officiated in ten Champions League games in his career. For me, for him to be given a semi-final at Stamford Bridge, that’s not good enough.”
In fact, Ovrebo has been in charge of twenty-eight Champions League games since 1999.
Frank Lampard spoke out against the decisions of the referee stopped short of condoning what went on afterwards.
“The penalties are clear as day. The linesman’s in line, the referee’s nearby. There were about three of them that were clear as anything and I can’t understand why they weren’t given.”
Fellow midfielder Michael Ballack, who was booked for running 40 yards alongside Ovrebo to protest over the final penalty appeal being dismissed, said,
“Everybody saw it and it was not one or two decisions, there were at least three, four five maybe we can discuss. It was not just the last-minute decision. If you have the history of the situations before maybe he should give this one at least.”
When running alongside the referee, Ballack clearly man-handled him. Should the card have been red?
Chelsea manager Guus Hiddink also seemed to defend the actions of his players,
“I can fully understand in the emotion of the game, as long as they don’t touch him, I can fully understand this disappointment. It’s not just one decision in doubt but it’s several. I can fully understand and I protect my players for this when they have this emotion, just with loads of energy and adrenalin in their bodies.”
There is no doubt that the performance of the official in this game and indeed the decision to send off Manchester United’s Darren Ferguson the evening before, were totally and utterly unacceptable. I do not expect UEFA to confirm that or make any apology, but at least we can all hope that they have learned an important lesson about who should be given the big games to officiate.
Angry
The matter that UEFA are likely to deal with is the reaction of the Chelsea players. Of course we can all understand that they were angry, upset, frustrated and devastated. Of course we can all understand that they would have thought the whole world was against them. What I can’t support is the fact that they behaved in such an unprofessional manner.
I have heard some people say that it is ironic that if Didier Drogba had not spent so much time rolling around on the ground in mock agony, there wouldn’t have been enough injury-time to allow Iniesta to grab the vital goal. Also, I don’t think the referee played any part in Drogba missing the glaring opportunity he had to put Chelsea 2-0 ahead early in the second half.
Whilst I have huge sympathy for the Chelsea players, I believe that UEFA and Chelsea themselves, need to take action against the appalling behaviour of Didier Drogba and also against John Terry for supporting what he did.
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