A NIGHT OF DISAPPOINTMENTS

It was a disappointing night for me on many levels, but I’ll come to that shortly, let me first set the scene.

It was the Second leg of the round of 16 tie between Manchester United and Real Madrid.

The tie was finely balanced at 1 – 1 after the first leg with United having the advantage of a precious away goal.

But Real Madrid having the enviable record of having scored in every away game in the competition could quite easily wipe that advantage out.

United took the lead early in the second half and things were looking good and then came the first of the disappointments after 56 minutes Nani is inexplicably sent off for dangerous play and the referee has gifted the match to Madrid.

So obviously I was disappointed that we lost, first and foremost but I was also deeply disappointed that the finely balanced game wasn’t allowed to unfold before a spellbound audience due to inept officiating.

But the sending off, ridiculous as it was, was not the worst of it.

After all poor refereeing decisions have always been part of the game and always will be until FIFA drags football into the 21^st century and finally submits to calls for video reviews as all the other major team sports have.

 

After the game the disappointments continued when as if to rub salt into the wounds of United fans we were subjected to former United player Roy Kean’s post match analysis.

In which he vehemently defended the referee in a rant that was completely at odds with the presenter, Adrian Chiles, and his fellow pundits Lee Dixon and Gareth Southgate.

 

Finally to end this night of disappointments came the biggest disappointment of them all was when Sir Alex declined to speak to the media and denied us an even more volatile episode than the usual purple faced post-match rant.