Shakhtar U-19 head coach Oleksiy Belik spoke about his great dissatisfaction with the refereeing of the 0-2 win over Dynamo U-19 in the last round of the youth championship.
Oleksiy Belik (photo: shakhtar.com)- "I think it is necessary to talk about what happened in terms of refereeing in the match with Dynamo U-19. Here are a few examples. When our central defender fouls for the first time in a game in the centre of the pitch, he is immediately given a yellow card - no question, I agree with the referee's decision. But at the same time, the centre-back of Kyiv breaks the rules three times on our players within five or six minutes - he kicks them in the legs, and the referee awards free-kicks, but does not warn the Kyiv player, does not even make a verbal remark, what is this? You yourself understand what it means for a centre-back to play on a yellow card at the start of a game. This is the first point.
Secondly, it is clear that I began to react to this, to draw the referee's attention, and the referee gave me a yellow card at first. But how did he do it? Not the way they do in the UEFA Youth League, when the referee comes to the touchline and shows a warning, looking you in the eye. This referee showed the card 50 metres away from me. Maybe it means that he is ashamed to look the coach in the eye, because there is a certain injustice towards me and my team?
And, of course, the "cherry on top" for Kyiv was the penalty that was not awarded to them. I don't know how, but it is simply impossible not to notice such an eleven-metre penalty - everyone saw it. I understand that referees are people who can also make mistakes, but why am I talking about this, because it's not just an ordinary mistake, but a system. Two rounds before, in the match against Kyiv, they gave us a second yellow card and sent off the best player of Dnipro-1 U-19, Kivinda, thus leaving Dnipro with ten men in the 15th minute and depriving them of a chance to fight for victory. Now here's the match between us and Dynamo U-19 that I was talking about.
I would like the relevant authorities that control the actions of referees, the same refereeing committee, to pay attention to this situation and finally start responding to these systemic errors properly. In general, if we take Kyiv, they played 10 out of 13 matches at home, and they invite all their opponents to play in Koncha Zaspa. That is why I believe that there is already a system in place. Personally, I will never ask anyone to influence the outcome of a match in any unfair way. I always say that I just want the referees to get out of my way and we have a good pitch - that's enough for me to lead the team to the championship," Belik said.
