VIRGIL VAN DIJK, the Celtic centre-half whose ordering off turned the last-32 Europa League tie with Inter Milan, last night branded referee Ivan Kruzliak the worst he has ever experienced.
Van Dijk received two yellow cards in the space of 11 minutes in the first half of the match with Roberto Mancini's side in the San Siro for challenges on Rodrigo Palacio and Mauro Icardi.
The Dutch defender felt that both decisions were wrong and was scathing about the performance of the Slovakian match official after his team had lost 1-0 to crash out of the competition.
The 23-year-old was also highly critical of Argentinian striker Icardi who appealed to the referee to book his opponent after he had gone to ground.
"It was a terrible decision," he said. "That is the worst referee I have ever experienced in my career. I don't know why he made this decision but it was shocking. I watched the whole game and I don't understand all of the decisions he made.
"The second yellow card was just a ball in the air that two players are challenging for. We are shoulder to shoulder and Icardi got up and asked for the referee to book me again. He did that and it was a terrible decision.
"I would never ask for an opponent to be booked but it happens in football. What disappoints me most is that they weren't yellow cards and it happened so early in the game. It was a bad decision and that shouldn't happen.
"I don't even know what the ref said to me. After the first yellow card, I was thinking:'What is going on here?' It was a fair challenge. Hard, yes, but we play man's football and that happens.
"I don't understand that one and I didn't understand the second one either. I knew the red card was coming and I just walked off. You can shout and scream and it doesn't change anything. I was just hoping the team would pull off the impossible task but Inter scored a goal."
Van Dijk felt his side, who had created chances when they had 11 men on the park and had two strong claims for penalties turned down after Stuart Armstrong and John Guidetti were brought down, could have claimed an historic result.
He said: "I want to apologise to my teammates and all the fans who travelled to Italy. I let them down and I feel terrible. If I'd stayed on the pitch for 90 minutes, we'd have had a big chance to go through.
"We had a good game plan and we started well. We learned a lot from the first leg at Celtic Park. We stayed close together as a back four and we talked a lot.
"We had chances and I think we would have had a good chance to go through.What happened was very bad for me and for the team. I felt so bad that I had let my team mates and all the fans down.
"It's so disappointing and I need to learn from this. I am young, I am learning every day and I've made high expectations for myself.
"Sometimes it's hard to meet them because I am young but I will try to learn from this. As a team, we showed we have made progress. We have been good in the league and even with 10 men, we showed our quality. It's just so disappointing that we are out of Europe."
Parkhead manager Ronny Deila also criticised Kruzliak's performance after watching his hopes of four trophies in his debut season at the club cut short at the San Siro.
The Norwegian described the sending off as "very cheap" and said of the official: "He had a bad day at work, that's for sure. If we had that bad a day we would have lost 6-0.
"There were things that happened in the game that ruined it for us. It was very even when 11 against 11. We defended well with 10 men but couldn't create anything.
"I feel sorry for the team - but very proud of the boys. There was a very good chance to go through and I think we showed that we have something at this level.
"It was an open match until the sending-off. It made it very difficult for us, we had to work hard in defence.
"Inter are a good team, so we have to get over it and start focusing on what is going to happen on Sunday."
Deila was referring to the visit of second-placed Aberdeen in a match which will go some way to deciding the destination of the title.
The champions are three points clear of the Dons with a game in hand and they face Dundee United in the William Hill Scottish Cup quarter-final and Scottish League Cup final next month as the quest for the domestic treble continues.
The former Stromsgodset boss said: "It was a good performance and give us motivation for domestic football so we can hopefully get back to the Champions League next season."
Roberto Mancini admitted Van Dijk's dismissal gave his side an advantage but insisted they had the game in hand.
The Inter boss said: "It made our life easier but we had the chances to score before that. We managed the game in the right way."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article