Mikel Arteta calls out referee after Arsenal controversy in PSG loss | Football | Sport
Mikel Arteta was not pleased (Image: TNT Sports)
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta pointed the finger at Daniel Siebert after the referee refused to give his team a penalty in extra time during the Champions League final. The Gunners lost 4-3 on penalties as Paris Saint-Germain were confirmed the back-to-back champions of Europe. But there was controversy during extra time, with the score locked at 1-1, when Noni Madueke went down inside the box under pressure from Nuno Mendes.
The incident left Declan Rice and Arteta particularly enraged but the VAR did not tell Siebert to go to the screen. The incident was somewhat similar to when Madueke won a penalty against Bayer Leverkusen in their round of 16 first leg in Germany, which they won 1-0. Malik Tillman was ruled to have fouled Madueke before Kai Havertz scored from the spot. Though Havertz also put Arsenal 1-0 up six minutes into the final in Budapest, Ousmane Dembele levelled with a second-half PSG penalty after Cristhian Mosquera brought down Kvhicha Kvaratskhelia.
And Arteta wasn’t too pleased post-match. “I watch it back and it could easily be a penalty,” the Spaniard said. “Especially we see the penalty they gave me this year in the competition. This season, the referee made a decision, and he made a different one with Cristhian Mosquera and that is an important one.”
In his post-match press conference, Arteta added: “I watched all the penalties in the competition in the last 72 hours to understand what a penalty is and what is not, and that easily can be a penalty.
“If if if… it’s not what happened and that’s it. So we need to do better, we will have to improve and find different margins to get the outcome that we want.”
Rice said: “I’ve not seen it back yet. At first glance on the pitch, I think he’s ahead of Nuno Mendes, and if I’m looking back at the one we got against Bayer Leverkusen, it’s very, very similar.
“But, look, I’m not going to get into that. Obviously, I was gutted at the time because I thought the ref would have a look. It was obviously not clear enough to be a pen. I thought it was, and so did our bench and our players.”
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Mikel Arteta with his runners-up medal (Image: Getty)
But Arsenal manager Arteta made it clear he’s still proud of his players, who earlier this month won the Premier League. It was Arsenal’s first league title since 2004. He said: “What I said to the players and the staff is that if I tell them one million times thank you it’s not going to be enough.
“And it’s not because we won the Premier League and it’s not because we played the cup final, it’s not because we played the Champions League final in the manner that we’ve done, it’s because the joy and the moments that we have lived together every single day and that’s above anything else.
“We have had an incredible competition. We haven’t lost a single match in the competition. But the reality is that when something had to go our way, especially in the boxes with the penalty that was given against Mosquera and then a penalty to Madueke and the penalty kicks, those margins didn’t go for us.
“First of all you have to go through that pain, digest it and turn it into fuel, as you said, to improve and to reach a different level because it will demand a different level with the quality that is around Europe.
“I want to congratulate PSG, Luis [Enrique] in particular, because they are, in my opinion, the best team in the world.”
