The leader of the Argentina national team, Lionel Messi, criticized the referee of the quarter-final match of his team, Mateo Laos, against the Netherlands at the 2022 World Cup. The striker's statement about the referee in the post-match commentary was quoted by TyC Sports.
During the match, the main referee of the match, the Spaniard Antonio Mateo Laos, "distributed" 17 yellow cards, nine of which Argentina received, including Messi in the 10th minute of added time in the second half. According to the attacker, the match ended "wrongly" due to mistakes by Mateo Laos. According to Messi, the officiating in that game caused him "a lot of anger".
"I think that everything should have gone wrong," Messi shared. - I don't want to talk about the referee. You can't be frank, otherwise you will be fined. We were scared during the game because we understood what was happening. FIFA must analyze the match. "You can't put a judge in the game who is not currently able to cope with this task," Messi said.
One of the controversial moments of the match was also related to the handball by Messi, for which the footballer did not receive a warning, but potentially a dismissal, because later the captain did earn a yellow card, but already for delaying time.