With two minutes to play Mexico led 1-0 but Wesley Sneijder equalised with a fierce drive before captain Rafael Marquez was judged to have tripped Arjen Robben and Klaas Jan Huntelaar calmly scored to put the Dutch in the quarterfinals.
“It seems to me the reason (we lost) was the referee, the man with the whistle.
He left us outside the next stage of the World Cup,” Herrera told reporters.
“If the referee starts marking fouls that don’t exist, you leave the World Cup to circumstances out of your hands. We expect the referee committee to take a look at that and that this gentleman goes home, just like us.”
With victory in their grasp on a scorching afternoon at the Castelao
arena, the defeat was a particularly sore one for Mexico who have
reached the last 16 at six consecutive World Cups and have lost every
time.
“It’s a World Cup where everything was against Mexico… Out of the four
matches that we had, three of them were referee disasters…
Unfortunately we didn’t achieve what we wanted,” Herrera said.
The Mexico boss was perhaps understandably prickly about the
officiating going into the game after his side had two goals harshly
disallowed in their opening match against Cameroon, and a strong
penalty appeal turned down against Croatia.
He said the spot kick for the Dutch could also have been avoided had
Robben been booked for diving earlier in the game, suggesting the
winger may not have risked going down so easily under the challenge
of Marquez for the late penalty.
“He dived three times, he should have cautioned him the first time,”
said Herrera, who also questioned why Portugal’s Proenca had been
selected for the game, suggesting a referee from Africa, Asia or South
America would have been fairer.
“I’m happy and calm about the performance of the boys… We’d done
really well. Then the team sits back and we start to give chances
No comments:
Post a Comment