Barcelona have made it two wins from two in this season’s Champions League. In what was, on paper, their most difficult group stage fixture, they have picked up a valuable three points away to Porto at the Estadio do Dragao.
Xavi Hernandez brought in Ronald Araujo and Oriol Romeu from the side that scraped past Sevilla on Friday night, and unfortunately for him and Barcelona, he was forced to make another alteration in the first half as Robert Lewandowski was forced off with an ankle injury.
However, it was his replacement Ferran Torres that scored the only goal of the game. Ilkay Gundogan pounced on a mistake in the Porto midfield, before slipping in the 23-year-old to fire into the back of the net, with what turned out to be the final kick of the first half.
Porto desperately pushed for an equaliser in the second half, with Marc-Andre Ter Stegen being forced into action on multiple occasions to keep the score at 1-0. They were also awarded a penalty, which VAR overturned on second viewing. As such, it remained 1-0, despite a late red card for Gavi.
The result sees Barcelona remain top of Group H, three points clear of Porto and Shakhtar Donetsk, who defeated Royal Antwerp 3-2 earlier on. The Catalans are now in an excellent position to reach the knockout rounds of the Champions League.
Some of the refereeing and var decisions tonight were quite simply appalling kounde clearly pulled fc porto striker shirt in the penalty box and got none of the ball then the cancelo handball decision was another one the fc porto player clearly brought the ball down with his shoulder not his hand
Barca were very very fortunate and lucky tonight tbh terrible performance porto were the better team imo and before anyone says but pedri,de jong,raphina were all missing fc porto also had alot of their regular starting players missing so im not having that excuse.
well that is most peculiar…
real madrid VAR decision overrules referees call not to give a penalty (correctly, you cannot controll your arms during high speed glide tackle, you are trying to maintain balance) and they deny porto two clear penalties with VAR.
one has to wonder.
Theres no wondering about it fc porto should have had 2 clear penalties.
“Porto should get those penalties”, fair enough. Other than that, can we agree that the referee is really piece of crap? Ruining the otherwise should be exciting match. Barca also overwhelmed with yellow cards that are actually should not be given. Red card, I can see why, but these yellow cards, this referee clearly need to be ousted. Really UEFA, PGMON? This referee should never officiating a match as important as Champions League nor Premier League. The referee also done a horrible job in Premier League either
correction, PGMOL
FYI: PGMOL are currently in hot water due to a lot of cases in Premier League due to bad refereeing
But seriously, both teams are in disadvantage due to ugly refereeing
Trials incoming
It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know and understand that Napoli should never have been awarded that penalty not that i personally give a f##k no offense,people on here complain all the time about the var and refereeing in la liga when you see the state of this week’s champions league refereeing & var and don’t even get me started with the luiz diaz goal that wasn’t in the premier league lmfao.
Well, honestly, this is not VAR fault, but it is really the people who operate it including the referee. Ironic right? We’ve already got the tech that we need but the people who operate it as incompetent as crap. Maybe the next thing that we need is live field ref cam and audio plus clearer standard to restrict those people from doing something stupid