Borussia Dortmund manager Thomas Tuchel has lambasted UEFA for their decision to reschedule his side's Champions League tie with Monaco for Wednesday evening, less than 24 hours after his players were involved in a reported terrorist attack.
Three explosions around Dortmund's team bus left two people injured on Tuesday night, one of them being the German club's defender Marc Bartra, who was taken to hospital after suffering cuts to his right arm when the bus window shattered next to him.
Dortmund went on to lose tonight's Champions League quarter-final first leg 3-2 at home to Monaco, with a bizarre own goal by Bartra's replacement Sven Bender perhaps representative of his side's mindset given what they had experienced just a day prior.
Speaking at his post-match press conference following their defeat, Dortmund boss Tuchel slammed UEFA for their treatment of the club in the immediate aftermath of the incident, revealing the European governing body's horrific insensitivity to the traumas experienced by both he and his players when they insisted the game go ahead on Wednesday evening:
We were never asked, we were informed by a text message that the UEFA made a decision in Switzerland. It felt lousy. And that sticks with us.
Minutes after the attacks the only question was whether the game could go through or not. We were treated as if a beer can was thrown at the bus. It gives you a feeling of impotence.
It will stick with us that we have to function and that everything else plays no role. We are outside of the bus, Marc [Barta] gets driven away in an ambulance, and we are informed about the decision. It does not feel good.
Tuchel also seemed to indicate that Dortmund considered not fulfilling the fixture regardless of UEFA's demands, but that his players demanded they play the game in spite of their rather fragile mental state.
We left it open to every player if he wants to play. We realised this morning that training is a distraction. Every player, every human, and this attack was on us as humans, can be scared stiff by this. But all of them wanted to play.
We would have wanted to have more time to digest all of this. We did not get this time. We have to live with the fact that the match was scheduled. It's about our dream, our big dream, and the squad did not have the feeling they could make the difference in the small situations.
Every one of us has to cope with the incident by himself. The thoughts will continue to circle around the events. Time helps. But ask me prior to the match next week if we are ready. There's no recipe for this.
As per ESPN FC, two suspects from the "Islamist spectrum" are currently at the centre of German police's investigation after a letter was found at the scene of the explosions. One person is currently being detained.
