DORTMUND, Germany, April 10 – Malaga president Abdullah bin Nasser Al-Thani has called for UEFA to investigate his team’s dramatic 3-2 Champions League defeat at Borussia Dortmund which he blamed on racism.
Dortmund scored two goals in 70 seconds in added time at home on Tuesday to reach the last four of the Champions League after their dramatic quarter-final finished 3-2 on aggregate after last Wednesday’s goalless first-leg in Malaga.
Replays showed both Germany midfielder Marco Reus’ 91st-minute equaliser and Felipe Santana’s 93rd-minute match-winner looked to have been scored from offside positions, leaving Malaga’s Qatari billionaire president fuming.
“This is not football, but racism, clearly,” he wrote on his Twitter account after his side were denied a Champions League semi-final place on their first season in the competition.
“I hope to open a thorough investigation UEFA regarding the Spanish club out this way [sic].
“Thank you very much for the team, you have been Champions on the pitch, I’m sorry to go out this way (to) injustice and racism.”
After the match, the Spaniards’ coach Manuel Pellegrini was highly critical of Scottish referee Craig Thomson, but Malaga’s second goal by Eliseu, eight minutes from time which had made it 2-1, was also shown to have been offside.
“It was like there wasn’t a referee on the pitch at the end, it was chaos in the closing stages, there were six or seven things which went unpunished in our area,” fumed Pellegrini.
“There was a chain of mistakes. Whatever needs to be changed, must be changed.”
