Portugal coach Santos slams referee for ruling out Ronaldo’s late winner in 2-2 draw against Serbia; says such mistakes are unacceptable at top-level football
Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo during their World Cup qualifier against Serbia in Belgrade on Saturday. Pic/Getty Images; (Right) A screen grab clearly shows the ball crossing the goalline
Portugal coach Fernando Santos said that it’s impossible that what he saw as a clear goal scored by Cristiano Ronaldo in Saturday’s World Cup qualifier against Serbia was ruled out.
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With the scores level at 2-2 in Belgrade, Ronaldo thought he had tapped in the winner in the 93rd minute. However, without VAR or goalline technology in use, officials decided that Serbia defender Stefan Mitrovic had cleared the ball off the line when, in fact, images showed that the ball had crossed the line.
Ronaldo furious
A furious Ronaldo was booked for his protests and at the final whistle stormed from the pitch, throwing his captain’s armband to the ground.
“We scored a goal that was not given when the ball went in. In a match of this level, that’s impossible,” Santos said.
Portugal coach Fernando Santos
Ronaldo later posted on his Instagram page: “I always give and will give everything for my country, that will never change. But there are difficult times to deal with, especially when we feel that an entire nation is being harmed.”
The match had started brightly for the Portuguese with two first-half headers from Diogo Jota that gave the away side a commanding lead at the break. However, Aleksandar Mitrovic pulled one back for the hosts seconds after the restart and Filip Kostic levelled the scores on the hour mark.
UEFA defends VAR absence
Meanwhile, UEFA said it intended to use VAR in the World Cup qualifying campaign that began last week but decided it was too complicated despite it being used in the recent Champions League and Europa League knockout phase.
“In 2019, UEFA had proposed to FIFA the implementation of VAR in the World Cup qualifiers. The impact of the pandemic on operational and logistical capabilities led UEFA to delay its implementation in the Europa League group phase [to 2021-22 instead of 2020-21] as well as to withdraw the proposal to implement VAR in the 2022 European qualifiers,” UEFA said in a statement.
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