Manchester City midfielder Rodri publicly challenged the officials after Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham, insisting that a key moment should have been reviewed and that repeated decisions have left his side disadvantaged. Speaking to Stan Sport after the match, Rodri described his frustration plainly. “I don’t know how to feel, honestly,” he said, before returning repeatedly to one incident he believes changed the game.<\/p>\n
“Now I see the images\u2014on the pitch, of course you cannot see\u2014it’s a clear foul.” He added that the opening goal should not have stood. “VAR is for a reason,” he said. “And these small details make the difference.<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to do our best. It’s the first goal they score, maybe they don’t score a [second] goal, we win the game.” Rodri insisted he was not usually outspoken about match officials. “And honestly, I never speak about referees,” he said. “I respect their job massively, but they have to pay attention to these things. He kicked the leg, it’s so clear. It’s so clear, he anticipated the leg of Marc. And it’s a clear foul. But it’s not today, it’s just two, three games in a row. And I don’t know why, honestly.<\/p>\n
“I know we won too much, and the people just don’t want us to win. But the referee has to be neutral. And for me, honestly, it’s not fair. It’s not fair, because we worked so hard in these situations.” He later summarised the feeling as he sees it: “It’s one game, and another game and another game,” he said. “And it’s not possible.”<\/p>\n
Manager Pep Guardiola avoided detailed criticism but could not entirely leave the point. When pressed, he asked: “If it\u2019s a central defender to a striker it\u2019s a penalty, right? You said the same, so you saw it.” He described the matter as “an \u00ademotional issue” and called it “fascinating in the \u00adPremier League.”<\/p>\n
Tottenham manager Thomas Frank accepted there was contact. “There\u2019s clear contact from him [Solanke] on it,” he said. “We want, in general, a higher \u00adthreshold [for fouls]. I understand it\u2019s in the grey area.”<\/p>\n
Guardiola had earlier protested after Antoine Semenyo\u2019s second goal was ruled out for a narrow offside against Newcastle United in the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final and referenced an overlooked penalty on Phil Foden and Dean Henderson\u2019s handball for Crystal Palace in last summer’s FA Cup final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rodri criticised decisions after City’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham insisting officials must be neutral.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,969,187],"tags":[801,1066],"class_list":["post-6430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-premier-league","category-tottenham-hotspur","tag-antoine-semenyo","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}