AC Milan’s long unbeaten run of 22 games in Serie A was ended by Napoli last night, but there are some question marks about the performance of referee Maurizio Mariani.
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La Gazzetta dello Sport (via PianetaMilan) gave a rating of 5 out of 10 to Mariani because he was badly positioned to see the contact from Sergino Dest on Khvicha Kvaratskhelia but he was able to evaluate the contact made in real time.
Massimiliano Irrati on the VAR called him over and Mariani still had the chance to make a judgement on how capable Dest’s touch on Kvaratskhelia was in terms of making the Georgian throw himself to the ground in the way he did.
The paper believes that the penalty was far from clear, given it took two minutes and seven seconds to make a call on what really happened between Dest and Kvaratskhelia.
The referee – although not well positioned – was convinced that the Milan defender had taken the ball and while there was contact, Mariani could still make a call when seeing the replay about the strength of the tackle.
There were two yellow cards that should have been given: Alexis Saelemaekers on Stanislav Lobotka (8′) and that of Ismaël Bennacer who blocked a breakaway from Piotr Zielinski.
