August 02, (THEWILL) – Paris Saint-Germain should have eliminated Real Madrid from the Champions League last season, according to Mauricio Pochettino, but the Argentine believes they were let down by the refereeing in the reverse fixture.
THEWILL recalls that PSG had defeated Los Blancos 1-0 in Paris before doubling its advantage at the Santiago Bernabeu in the second leg of their Round of 16 doubleheader. For the first 150 minutes of the match, PSG was clearly the better team.
But the second leg changed when Karim Benzema eventually rushed in to give Real Madrid fans hopes of a comeback after Gianluigi Donnarumma was caught dithering with the ball on his line. The attacker would go on to score a hat-trick as the Spanish team rallied to win, in large part thanks to some atrocious PSG defending.
In each of the following three rounds, Real produced an identical comeback to win Europe’s biggest football prize for the 14th time. Pochettino, who was fired by PSG last month, claimed his team would have likely won if Benzema’s challenge on Donnarumma had been deemed a foul.
“I believe that there are circumstances in football that happen, that happen and that cannot be controlled. I think that the lack of [call for a foul for] Benzema on Donnarumma existed and if it had been reviewed in the VAR, today we would be talking about something else, about the elimination of Madrid, but that was a trigger that gave Real Madrid a lot of belief, a different energy on their pitch and logically we made some kind of mistake, but this is football and it does not have to go beyond what is a football analysis.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
