Arne Slot blasted the decision not to show Lucas Bergvall a red card before the midfielder scored the winning goal for Tottenham in the 1-0 win against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg on Wednesday.
Slot expressed his anger that Bergball escaped a second yellow card after tripping Kostas Tsimikas with a tackle.
Tsimikas had to go off the pitch after the challenge but Stuart Attwell decided to give Liverpool the chance to hit on the counter — when they lost possession seconds later, the advantage went to Spurs who used the space vacated by Tsimikas to score in the 86th minute.
Fuming at the decision of the official, Slot insisted it impacted the game.
“The decision made had a lot of impact on the result tonight.
“The fourth official told me why he thought it wasn’t a second yellow and he heard that probably from the referee.
“What we can say about it is that he said he didn’t stop the counter-attack, every manager would say they prefer the second yellow than a free-kick.
“Spurs weren’t happy with a few decisions that happened [against Newcastle] on Sunday. Maybe today a decision went in favour of them, which is of course very unlucky for us.”
However, Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou saw the incident in a different light.
Quizzed if Bergvall was lucky to avoid a sending off, Postecoglou opposed.
“Great question, no he wasn’t.
“It’s happened to us consistently, you look at our games, and we’ve asked the officials and they’ve said if you play advantage, as long as it’s not a cynical tackle, then yellow card doesn’t get shown. Now to me, that was pretty clear.”
