The Georgia coach was angry with the refereeing on Sunday after his team’s defeat against Spain in the last 16 of the Euro (4-1).
Georgia’s great adventure at the Euro came to an abrupt end in the round of 16. The fault of Spain, who beat the surprise team of the competition by a wide margin (4-1). The Georgians nonetheless made La Roja doubt. Despite the Spanish domination, it was Willy Sagnol’s men who opened the scoring after only 18 minutes of play. And Spain finally had to wait until the final moments of this first period to equalize.
On a pass from Nico Williams, Rodri saved his team with a shot from the edge of the area. But Spain can also thank Jérôme Brisard, who was officiating on video. The French referee did not find anything wrong with Alvaro Morata’s offside position, which was nevertheless masking the Georgian goalkeeper, Giorgi Mamardashvili. Enough to provoke the anger of Willy Sagnol.
“There was a power cut on the VAR bus”
“Morata is clearly in an offside position on the shot. We can see it in the image, our goalkeeper is forced to move to get the ball. I think there was a power cut on the VAR bus,” he said at the microphone of beIN Sports, seeing for this purpose the “turning point of the match”. “If the Dutch goal against France was disallowed for an offside by Dumfries, then there were ten times more reasons to disallow this Spanish goal tonight, he added. If we had gone into the break leading 1-0, we would have had more energy in the second half.”
And the Georgian coach was not the only one who was upset. “He bothered me a lot, it was clearly offside, Giorgi Mamardashvili lambasted, adding: “We might have lost, but an opening goal from the opposition is always decisive.”
