Petrachi: 'Absurd disallowed goal!'

By Football Italia staff

Roma director of sport Gianluca Petrachi was furious with the referee after a last-gasp goal against Cagliari was disallowed. “It’s absurd! In England, they’ll laugh at us.”

The game ended 1-1, but in stoppages Nikola Kalinic bundled the ball over the line after he had pushed Fabio Pisacane into goalkeeper Robin Olsen.

The referee disallowed the goal on the spot, but Roma didn’t realise this until after Pisacane had been stretchered off with a neck-brace.

“We are very upset, because we’ve been getting bad decisions against us for weeks now and we cannot understand it,” director of sport Petrachi told Sky Sport Italia.

“I think Roma should’ve been awarded a penalty against Bologna, at least. Today, the referee had a bad attitude towards us from the very start. He did nothing but create tension in what was otherwise a calm game.

“The goal disallowed at the end is ridiculous. Ridiculous. It’s a contact that happens in the box all the time, there are hundreds of those in every game and you cannot disallowed a goal for that.

“It was contact, not a push, because this is a contact sport and not a ballet class for little girls. It is a man’s game and there is contact.

“Kalinic anticipates the defender, gets there first and is simply stronger when taking the right position. If you show this footage in England, they’ll laugh at us and say what are they doing in Italy, calling that a foul? It’s embarrassing.

“It’s not like Pisacane falls over with the push. He simply collides with Olsen and that is where he gets hurt, not the Kalinic contact. It’s a perfectly normal contact and certainly not an obvious push.

“It’s absurd, if you disallow a goal like that, you may as well not play football anymore. On top of that, the referee didn’t even go to view it on VAR just in case he’d made a mistake. That is a technical error from the referee and falsified the result of the match.”

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