Jose Mourinho reacts to 'injustice' by VAR referee
Fenerbahçe manager Jose Mourinho expressed his frustration with the VAR referee after his team was eliminated from the UEFA Europa League Round of 16 following a penalty shootout loss to Scotland's Rangers.
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Highlights from Mourinho's statements:
"I leave the commentary to the experts who killed us after the first leg. They were honest but harsh. I hope they will be honest in their commentary today as well. I am very proud of my team. You mentioned fighting on the pitch, but we were also by far the better side in terms of play. I hope UEFA doesn't punish me. I cannot express what is on my mind, or I will be penalized. What happened today is not the result of Budapest. These are ordinary things. The United match, the penalties, what happened today... They say the VAR referee is one of the best in the world, Van Boekel. I had a dream, I had achieved it 5 times, but my players were going to win it for the first time. I am sorry for everyone who shared this dream. It is not easy, but we will move on."
"I don't think the VAR referee will have a bad night's sleep tonight. He will have a very comfortable, quiet, and nice night. He will then officiate a big international match, but we have lost our dreams. This is an injustice."
"We won 2-0. We lost this tie for different reasons. We did a great job in the second leg. We played wonderfully and reached the score. We were the ones who deserved to win after 90 minutes. We were also the ones who deserved it after 120 minutes. We were the team that was denied 3 penalties. Everything is very strange. These were very obvious penalties..."
"We trained for 3 days in a row without a break. We approached these matches with an optimistic outlook. The players were also extremely confident. I would prefer to be eliminated this way. I would prefer to be eliminated with such a perfect comeback. I am sure it hurts us more. Sunday's match will also be very difficult, but I would prefer it to be this way. We have lost only 1 of our last 20 matches, and that was against Rangers. It will be possible to win again and return to good performance."
"This club has the potential to play in European finals. I achieved this with Porto. It is difficult even for Turkish teams to reach the semi-finals, let alone win the trophy. Today, we absolutely deserved to reach the quarter-finals. It is not easy at all to make such a comeback."