Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has called Tottenham defender Jan Vertonghen a disgrace after he was involved in a clash with striker Fernando Torres, which ended with the Spaniard being sent off.
The Blues forward was already on a yellow-card and was then booked again after battling with the Belgium for an aerial ball.
However, the referee judged Torres to have lead with his elbow, and for that, he was shown a second-yellow.
The game ended 1-1 and after the full-time whistle, Mourinho aired his opinion on the incident.
‘I don’t think the referee is guilty,’ said Chelsea manager Mourinho. ‘He made the wrong decision, but he trusts the player and he sees a player who looks like he’ll be going to hospital with broken bones pretending it was a violent action. I think the normal tendency is to follow him and make that decision.’
‘It doesn’t look good from Fernando,’ said Mourinho, ‘but it looks worse when a player pretends he’s injured. You can lose control and explode in the heat of game but pushing the referee for a bad decision I really don’t like.’
‘I think this is about the game and especially in this country,’ he said. ‘I learned before I came here what the game is and the principles you have to play by. When I arrived here in 2004, I had a couple of players from other countries and I had to educate them because England is England and not other countries.
‘In other countries, people say, “Oh, the guy was clever, he was very intelligent, he pretends that it is a penalty or a red card”. They say, “This player is really amazing”. That’s not the case in England, that’s why I don’t think the referee is guilty.
‘Maybe I’m old fashioned and the last one that cares about this. I’m not English but it is one of these things: don’t kill the show for millions of people just because you want to be clever. It’s a disgrace that you can do what he did to someone else in the same job. Hopefully the committee will remove Fernando’s suspension and give it to Vertonghen instead.’
Written by Alex Batt – @AlexBatt
