What We're Reading
Mourinho Questions Ref's West Brom Apology
- Sky Sports News, Friday, November 22, 2013 3:28 PM
Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho wants to know why Mike Riley, head of the Professional Game Match Officials Board, called West Brom coach Steve Clarke to apologize for the performance of Andre Marriner, who awarded a late penalty to Chelsea when the two clubs met at Stamford Bridge a few weeks ago. The controversial penalty was awarded in the fourth minute of stoppage time when Ramires went down in the area after colliding with Steven Reid. Eden Hazard converted the resulting spot-kick to salvage a 2-2 draw.
Prior to the Blues match against West Ham on Saturday, Mourinho said he wants to know if a precedent has now been set whereby apologies for refereeing mistakes will soon be issued as a matter of course. "I'm very curious to know the consequences of it," he said. "At least now the referees know, they know one thing. If in a controversial -- I'm not saying a mistake -- decision that hypothetically -- and, I repeat, hypothetically -- favors Chelsea, they know they are going to be publicly exposed by their boss. That they know. They can make, hypothetically, mistakes, favoring other teams, nothing happens.”
He added: "If hypothetically -- and, I repeat, hypothetically -- they make a mistake, they are publicly exposed by their own boss. I'm very curious to know if it was just an isolated phone call. I'm curious to know if people see that as a normal situation. I'm interested to know if this is the start, that from now on it's going to be the same for everybody." He added that he was curious to know if the head coaches of Hull, Norwich, Swansea and Aston Villa had also received calls for perceived mistakes made by referees against them.
