Metalist 1925" executive director Andriy Nedelin criticised the refereeing of the match of the 9th matchday of the Ukrainian championship against "Dnipro-1" (0:1).
- Can you comment in detail on the position of Metalist 1925 on the situation with the unassigned penalty?
- In our opinion, there was a penalty 100%. Our opinion is shared by other specialists. I also received calls from other UPL clubs, expressing their disrespect for the work of referees at our match. Expert assessments were that the head referee should have been more attentive to this episode. If we use the VAR system, it was probably possible to watch this episode there on the monitor.
As you know, to comment on referees' decisions - God forbid you criticise them. We know how delicate referees are. They could probably take offence at us, we wouldn't want that. The way this system is organised, clubs and players have no rights, no freedoms in this matter. We are like those sheep that have to follow the flock and we can't comment on anything.
But if you ask my personal opinion, it's lawlessness, I can't call it otherwise. It does not satisfy me as a club manager at all. What to do? It seems necessary to change the system, to change the management processes in the referee corps. Everyone has noticed that "Metalist 1925" never once during its existence, during the new cadence, when the club was acquired three years ago, did not criticize, did not appeal to the committee of referees.
We have been humiliated these three years. We feel that this is devaluing the brand of our passage. There is a crazy amount of money being invested in the project. I'm not speaking for our football club now, but football in general. Insane amounts of money are being invested, and referees with fairly low competence are still allowed to do things like this.
We can qualify yesterday's actions as theft or gop-stop. According to the game, we had the right to count on this 11-metre mark. I do not even want to qualify other episodes in any way.
By the way, we experienced the same thing in the game with "Rukh". Instead of two penalties, we got a penalty, instead of beating Ruch 3-1 at Arena Lviv, we are 1-1 down. Of course, we are not satisfied with it.
Who can be satisfied with stealing, when they reach into your pocket and take a lot of money? These points in the standings are worth millions of hryvnias, if you translate it into absolute figures. It's an insane investment. Why the hell should I swallow it all? Incomprehensible acts.
Apparently, they are sorting something out in the referees' committee today. As we have already been informed, the heads of these referees have already qualified the episode as a complex one, which the referee handled 100% correctly. We are not fools, we have eyes. They said something about the arm being pinned down. The ball flew into the goal, the weirdo blocked the movement of the ball with his hand, parried, so to say, Boryachuk's shot, when the ball was flying into the goal. What is it, if not a penalty?
- Have you appealed to the committee of referees about this?
- We will not appeal to the committee of referees. We will prove with our game that these people, it is hard to even call them people, these referees respected us. We will score three and three more penalties in our own goal. I guess it is necessary, I do not understand. Yesterday there were a lot of controversial episodes. Yesterday the referee judged the match "on shouting". We also believe that the penalty kick, after which we scored a goal, was also whistled by the referee for shouting. He took the ball away from us more than once.
These were episodes, they do not colour our football at all. Yesterday was a great game, with a lot of chances. Some Blavatsky decided differently, took personal responsibility not to go, not to review this episode with VAR. It's a penalty, it's not some fight in the centre of the pitch. It's an episode: a penalty, in our opinion, a hand play by an opposing player.
If you saw the eyes of the head coach of Dnipro-1, the eyes of the players of Dnipro-1, emotionally they were ready for the penalty. Everyone saw that Gutsulyak was hit by the ball. There without VAR, without replays, in the dynamics of the game it was noticeable from the stands, from another continent, it was noticeable that the ball hit Gutsulyak's hand. And he didn't argue at all.
