Leonardo: 'Milan elimination unjust'

By Football Italia staff

Milan director Leonardo was furious after the Europa League exit to Olympiacos, blaming the referee. “In the days of VAR, it becomes difficult to accept.”

The decisive moment was a very controversial penalty for Ignazio Abate’s embrace of Vasilis Torosidis in the 3-1 result.

“We are out of the Europa League and have to evaluate everything. I just want to see the footage of the goals and the penalty before saying what I think,” he told Sky Sport Italia.

“It looks to me as if the penalty was non-existent. On a couple of occasions too, they had this system of putting the hand on the corner as if to wait for someone else and taking it, outside the corner, which we tried once and the referee whistled to stop us.

“If you go out of the Europa League for something like that, in the days of VAR, it becomes difficult to just accept a result. It’s ridiculous that an instrument like VAR that everyone now uses cannot be used in a European tournament.

“We also went to complain, as there was a bizarre noise every time we went to attack. I don’t know if it was a flute or a klaxon or what, but it’s not fair to use a sound like that to distract every time we go forward. It was genuinely irritating. The referee should’ve stopped play and told them to cut it out.

“After they scored, it actually got louder.”

Milan could’ve afforded to lose 1-0 or even 2-1, but 3-1 was the result they could not handle.

“We were three points ahead of Olympiacos, it was a difficult situation for them to win and it was in fact totally decided by these incidents.

“This is a team under construction, I’m not saying we were impressive today or that we deserved to go through. We know this is a tough season, I don’t want alibis, but it seems so obviously unfair and unjust that I cannot stay silent.”

Watch Serie A live in the UK on Premier Sports for just £9.99 per month including live LaLiga, Eredivisie, Scottish Cup Football and more. Visit: https://www.premiersports.com/subscribenow