Jose Mourinho was disappointed with the refereeing during their 1-1 draw with Monza: ‘the game as overseen by the worst referee I’ve ever witnessed in my career.’ The Giallorossi boss didn’t hold back after the match, and made repeated reference to referee Daniele Chiffi who oversaw the game. Speaking with DAZN (as quoted by Romapress), the Portuguese tactician lamented his lack of options from the bench and also criticized the club for not having the ‘DNA’ to say they don’t want particular referee’s in charge:
“We were lacking a bit of attention but the team’s attention on the pitch is directly affected by physical condition.
“You lose concentration when you’re fatigued. We’ve got guys like Pellegrini, Cristante, and Mancini, who are at their physical limits, having to play every single game and giving everything they have.”
“There’s a lot of difficulties we’ve got to face such as constantly playing the same guys in addition to guys that don’t have much experience and lack the quality to feature at this level.”
“Our bench is non-existent. We knew tonight would be tough and the lads did their best. It’d be biased of me to say we deserved to win but playing a game overseen by the worst referee (Daniele Chiffi) I’ve ever witnessed in my career, and I’ve seen many bad ones, makes it even more difficult.’
“As a club, Roma don’t have the strength to say ‘We don’t want this referee’ like other clubs do. This is where the club must grow, they don’t have this DNA.”
“That’s why I left the pitch early. I was desperate to say some things to Chiffi but I would’ve gotten sent off and I didn’t want to do that to my squad.”
“But as for us, when you’ve got 30 players that are all at the same level you’re able to rotate the team more easily but this isn’t our reality.”
“The teams that were terrible in Europe got eliminated early on and now only have to worry about playing one game each week–this isn’t the case for us.”
“Next match? For Inter I can only count on Matic. Everyone else – Smalling, Wijnaldum, Dybala and Belotti – have zero percent chance of playing with Inter.”
