{"id":321220,"date":"2025-12-17T16:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/321220\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T16:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:32:10","slug":"liverpool-champions-league-injustice-labelled-death-of-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/321220\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool Champions League “Injustice” Labelled “Death of Football”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent Liverpool win in the Champions League<\/a> has been labelled the \u201cdeath of football\u201d by a former player, with Inter Milan still lamenting the \u201cinjustice\u201d of the Reds\u2019 1-0 win.<\/p>\n

Having lost their previous Champions League<\/a> match 4-1 to PSV, Liverpool went to San Siro without Mo Salah<\/a> but managed to scrape a 1-0 win thanks to a late Dominik Szoboszlai<\/a> penalty.<\/p>\n

Though Liverpool kept Inter at bay for much of the match, the hosts felt they were deserving of a point.<\/p>\n

Former Inter and Italy goalkeeper Emiliano Viviano went a step further, highly criticising the decision to award a dubious penalty for Alessandro Bastoni\u2019s pull on Florian Wirtz<\/a>\u2018s shirt.<\/p>\n

He said on TV Play (via Inter News<\/a>): \u201cThat stuff is the death of football. <\/p>\n

\"MILAN,<\/p>\n

\u201cEven a top referee I asked told me that this is madness, not a penalty. The insults? I don\u2019t care at all. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Liverpool players and manager were struggling to answer questions about this penalty. It goes back to my battle with logic; the players are stuck in their positions, one has his back turned. Even if he pulls his shirt, it\u2019s not a penalty for me. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I would have said the same if it had been called on an Italian team, even Fiorentina (Viviano\u2019s team). Even if Alessandro Bastoni is naive, that\u2019s never a penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n

In truth, it was a harsh decision as Wirtz could have stayed on his feet, but Liverpool will feel they deserved a spot of luck given they were unfortunate to concede a penalty themselves, away at Galatasaray, which also led to a 1-0 loss.<\/p>\n

Ibrahima Konate<\/a> also had a goal ruled out at San Siro, earlier in the match, that arguably should have stood.<\/p>\n

\"MILAN,<\/p>\n

Striker Lautaro Martinez rued the result, saying<\/a> at the Gazetta Sport Awards: \u201cWe\u2019re disappointed but not angry, because if you lose because of a referee\u2019s mistake, there\u2019s little you can do. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re sorry we threw everything away because of an injustice. If penalties were awarded for every holding foul, the game would never be played.\u201d <\/p>\n

On CBS<\/a>, defender Manuel Akanji, who is on loan from Man City<\/a>, also disputed the referee\u2019s call: \u201cThe penalty situation, I mean he pulls his shirt but it\u2019s a soft pull and obviously if you watch everything in slow motion, everything looks far worse than it actually is. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe player runs away from the goal and he pulls his shirt a bit and it\u2019s one of the softest penalties I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Inter player and former Man United<\/a> attacking midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan added: \u201cIt hurts to lose a match like this, when you fight for 85 minutes and a penalty like that is awarded, but we have to move on. <\/p>\n

\"MILAN,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to accept, but we need to keep our heads up, work harder, and try to change things in the next two matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight wasn\u2019t our best performance, but we shouldn\u2019t forget that we were up against a top-level opponent. It was a balanced game and, in my opinion, a draw would have been fair, but the referee decided to award a penalty for what felt like a dive.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Inter weren\u2019t outplayed on the night, they barely threatened a potentially vulnerable Reds defence and created only one big chance at home, according to FotMob<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the night, they produced just 0.44 xG and managed just two shots on target to Liverpool\u2019s five. This was hardly a performance that warranted much more than a point at best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent Liverpool win in the Champions League has been labelled the \u201cdeath of football\u201d by a former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[126874,218,2903,122748,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-321220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-emiliano-viviano","tag-football","tag-inter-milan","tag-inter-milan-vs-liverpool","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}