As if it didn’t hurt enough already. At the end of an astonishing and ultimately painful night at the Santiago Bernabéu, Thomas Tuchel complained that when he went to shake hands with Szymon Marciniak, he found the Polish referee laughing with the Real Madrid manager, Carlo Ancelotti.
“I think this is very, very bad timing – and I told him that,” the Chelsea manager said, after words had been exchanged.
That sensitivity was perhaps understandable after Chelsea had led 3-0, putting themselves within 10 minutes of the semi-final, only to concede twice and go out 5-4 on aggregate, leaving Tuchel to describe himself as “very disappointed and very proud at the same time”.
The manager insisted that Chelsea had not deserved to be eliminated, citing luck, two mistakes with the ball being given away for the two they conceded, a lack of efficiency in front of goal and Real Madrid’s “pure individual quality” as the reason for their elimination.
The refereeing, he implied, might have been another. Although he stopped short of suggesting that any headline decisions had been wrong, the Chelsea coach said he thought Marciniak should have checked the replay himself before ruling out Marcos Alonso’s goal for handball, rather than allow himself to be guided by the VAR official, Tomasz Kwiatkowski.
“It’s not only today; it was like this in the first leg,” he started to say, when asked about the official, before pausing and noting: “Maybe I get problems [if I talk]. If you play against Real Madrid, you can maybe expect that not everybody has the courage.
“I told him I am super disappointed that he doesn’t come and check [the footage of the handball] on his own. You should stay the boss and not give the decision to someone sitting in a chair, isolated from the atmosphere. He should stay in charge and check it on his own and explain it better. I thought we deserved more minutes [added on] at the end. Maybe it is too much to ask for in matches like this against this opponent. Listen, we had it in our hands and we were not lucky enough.
“We played a fantastic match, we deserved what we had, we scored four goals and we had big chances to score even more. Unfortunately, we had two mistakes in crucial moments and against Real Madrid. We deserved to go through. But it was not meant to be. You need luck and it was not on our side.”
Tuchel added: “I was disappointed that the referee had a good time with my colleague Ancelotti. I know that Carlo is a gentleman and a nice guy and when I go I see him smiling and laughing out loud with the opposition coach and I think this is very, very wrong time to do this at the end of 120 minutes of fight, when you give every last drop, to go [and see that]. I think this is very, very bad timing.”
