UEFA Champions League News: Wenger has no sympathies with Real Madrid or Jose Mourinho
Arsene Wenger has come out and labeled the acts of Jose Mourinho and his plays as pitiful, as UEFA has charged Jose Mourinho, Iker Casillas, Xabi Alonso, Sergio Ramos and Jerzy Dudek for displaying un-sportsman like conduct during
Real’s win over Ajax. Despite the fact that the Spanish giants won the match in a fantastic fashion, their progress to the round of sixteen was marred by two bizarre sending offs, of Sergio Ramos and Xabi Alonso. Strangely, both the players were already on
yellow cards when they were shown their second cards of the night by the referee for indulging in time wasting activities on the pitch.
When the second half kicked off, Jerzy Dudek allegedly ran towards his team’s goal side and spoke to Iker Casillas. Iker then communicated the message to Ramos. While Jose himself allegedly communicated to Alonso, it is believed
that the Portuguese manager told his players to deliberately get sent off so that they can miss the next meaningless match in the UEFA Champions’ League group stages against Auxerre and have a clean record for the round of 16.
This weird collaboration has been spotted by UEFA and their final verdict is still awaited by the team from Madrid. In the English Premier League, Arsene Wenger, Arsenal’s manager has not dismissed that the idea to do the same
thing might have crossed his mind but the Frenchman was adamant that Jose and his players provided an example of why “not to do it” in the first place.
Wenger said, "You never say that it doesn't cross your mind, and you have to be completely honest about it. But when you see how it looks on television, I must say, what happened there is the best demonstration to think, 'Never
do that again'. For you as well, never envisage doing that because it looks, frankly, horrible." It crosses your mind if two games later you play the biggest game of the season and you have a meaningless game just after and the players can be suspended."
Arsene and Jose obviously are famous rivals from Mourinho’s days back in the English Premier League, where the Portuguese national was in charge at Chelsea, Arsenal’s great London rivals. Wenger went onto say, "It's a pity to see
that from a big club. You can call it what you want, but it's not what you want to see on a football pitch. It's always the same: on a football pitch, you want to respect people who pay money to watch a football game. What they want is to watch football, not
to watch these kinds of things. If it's Arsenal or Real Madrid, or anybody else, you don't want to accept that."
Arsene’s own team lost their last UEFA Champions League match to Braga, Wenger came out after the defeat and blamed the referee for making some horrendous calls during the match. Nonetheless, the ex-Monaco manager was quite sympathetic
to the officials as he said in his latest interview, "They are human beings who make mistakes as well. We have seen as well in some games that they made a wrong decision when the referee had it right at the start."
The Frenchman also spoke in favor of video technology, something that UEFA and FIFA remain cautiously pragmatic about. Arsene said, "I've always been for it and you will not be surprised if I do not change my mind. But I'm ready
to accept everything that makes the decision better and that gives help to the referee. If the fifth official is the answer to it, I'm happy. But to me, watching all the games I've seen, it does not look at the moment a conclusive answer."
Tags: