Pellegrini disagrees with Madrid penalty pgzen

pgzen Manuel Luis Pellegrini has hit out at referee who awarded Real Madrid a penalty following a clash between Vinicius Junior and Rui Silva as Betico suffered a 2-0 defeat. pgzen

Real Betis coach Manuel Luis Pellegrini insisted Betis were evenly matched against Real Madrid before conceding twice in the second half through Kylian Mbappe, but the visitors boss believes Los Blancos should not have been awarded a penalty as the French forward sealed the win, Diario AS reports on Monday.  ( pgzen )

‘We played a good game because we intended to play at the Bernabeu against a great team like Real Madrid, who are in a delicate moment. We tried to play close, I think we succeeded in most of the game, we had many chances to score,’ said the Chilean coach.

Pellegrini was left dissatisfied with Real Madrid’s decision to award a penalty before Kylian Mbappe converted to put Los Blancos 2-0 up in the 75th minute after Vinicius Junior was brought down in the area following a collision with Portuguese goalkeeper Rui Silva.

‘(Mbappe’s) first goal opened up the game a little bit and the second, which VAR intervened in the penalty, when Vinicius went down after losing possession. He went over the goalkeeper. The referee had to use VAR to review the incident and because of that, the game was in Real Madrid’s favour.’ 

The Betis coach also cited the previous example of referee Javier Alberola Rojas not awarding a similar penalty to Real Betis last season.

‘We were 1-0 up, there was plenty of time to try to equalise or win the game and then the moment came when VAR intervened, likely to intervene. I remember last year the same referee who did this to us looked at Assane (Diao)’s penalty and decided it wasn’t, but today it was for Real Madrid and the game was over for them.’

In addition, Marco van Basten, the legendary striker of the Netherlands national team, also spoke about the incident to the Dutch media, saying that Vinicius kicked Rui Silva’s leg while the Real Betis goalkeeper did nothing and in his view, it should not have been a penalty.

‘Vinicius kicked the Betis goalkeeper’s leg, he didn’t do anything. It’s ridiculous to use VAR to call it a penalty. This is a typical example. VAR has never played this game before. If you’ve played it, you know it,’ said Van Basten.