Not happy’ – The furious Man City rant blaming Sweden and Pep Guardiola for Champions League pain
Manchester City are more comfortable now in the Champions League knockout stages than their first visit in 2014
Pep Guardiola has elevated Manchester City in the Champions League, not just to win the competition but to become serial contenders always challenging in the latter stages.
The previous City manager had a different challenge on his hands: get the club past the group stages, which Roberto Mancini had twice failed to do. And while Manuel Pellegrini was able to waltz through to the knockouts at the first attempt, it all fell apart in bizarre fashion with some of the blame placed indirectly with Guardiola.
City were sensational in the 2013/14 under Pellegrini, playing a swashbuckling brand of football with two strikers that saw them still on for the Quadruple when they met the famous Barcelona in the last-16 of the Champions League.
However, when Jesus Navas was denied a penalty and then Martin Demichelis was sent off for conceding one that Lionel Messi converted, there was only one thing on Pellegrini’s mind: a knockout game two years earlier involving AC Milan that the same referee had been in charge of.
In Pellegrini’s mind, Swedish referee Jonas Eriksson was trying to make up for the fact that he hadn’t given Barcelona against AC Milan in their 2012 quarter-final – a performance that had brought unhappiness from their coach Pep Guardiola and the full-blown fury of the Spanish and Catalan press. That led City’s mild-mannered manager to angrily confront Eriksson on the pitch after their 2-0 defeat in 2014, and he had not calmed down by the time he spoke to reporters.
“It was just to tell him he decided the game. I was not happy because he decided the game,” he said of his reason for speaking to the officials. “He did not have any control of the game.
“He favoured Barcelona from the beginning to the end. I think it was not a good idea to put a referee from Sweden in charge and a referee who made a mistake against Barcelona in the group stages.
Before the penalty it was a foul on [Jesús] Navas when he [Eriksson] was three metres from the play so he could see it. From the beginning I felt the referee was not impartial to both teams. So he decided the game. And after it was not a penalty, it was outside the box.”
Putting a referee in charge who had previously upset Barcelona was one thing, but what was the issue with putting a Swedish referee in charge? In his angriest press conference in three years as a City manager, Pellegrini doubled down.
“I think there is more important football in Europe than Sweden,” he said. “A big game with two important teams – that kind of game needs a referee with more experience. This referee whistled the Barcelona-Milan game and he made an important error against Barcelona. Today he remedied it.”
Pellegrini would apologise for his comments soon after, yet they would not spare him from a two-match ban in the competition – including the return leg that saw them knocked out. That result came days after a shock FA Cup defeat at home to Championship side Wigan Athletic as the wheels came off the Quadruple chase all at once.
As much as Pellegrini’s rantings seemed wild at the time, they have been brought strangely back into the light by refereeing controversy at the Emirates last week in the Champions League quarter-final between Arsenal and Bayern. Thomas Tuchel was incensed at a penalty denial for a bizarre handball by Gabriel, while Arsenal fumed over a last-minute spotkick not given to Bukayo Saka after he charged into Manuel Neuer in the box.
The referee? Glenn Nyberg, from Sweden. “The 35-year-old’s highly questionable performance does beg the question of whether officiating at a level such as the Allsvenskan – Sweden’s top flight – is sufficient preparation for taking charge of a Champions League quarter-final between the likes of Arsenal and Bayern Munich,” wrote SkySports after the match.
Guardiola has had his fair share of refereeing anger in the competition as well, seeing red when Antonio Maheu Lahoz and his officials disallowed a perfectly legitimate goal that would have brought them to within one of Liverpool in their 2018 quarter-final. “Mateu Lahoz is a special guy, he likes to be different, he likes to be special,” Guardiola fumed after he had been forced to watch from the stands as what should have been a 3-2 deficit ended 5-1.
Italian referee Daniele Orsato has taken charge of this fixture twice before – a 2-1 win for City in 2020 and that 3-1 win for Real two years later. The officials in charge of Wednesday’s game at the Etihad will have done well if nobody is talking about them and their history after the game.
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