The big drama in Italian football this week has been accusations by Inter Milan players and board members of suspicious activity by the referees in their 1-0 loss to Juventus last weekend.
Juan Cuadrado scored the game's only goal, a rasping hit from just outside the box, but one incident was marked out as looking particularly dodgy and has been plastered all over the media since.
The incident in question is below, and the uproar is due to the referee stopping Mauro Icardi from running through on goal after Chiellini played the ball back to Buffon, as the Inter player thought the ball was live.
Juve-Inter never ending.
Today this storming in Italy:
ref stops Icardi going to goal, nobody understands why.
Freekick taken w steady ball pic.twitter.com/Ua3COcPv5y— Tancredi Palmeri (@tancredipalmeri) February 8, 2017
This resulted in a bit of a verbal back-and-forth between the board members of the two clubs, with those in power at Juve expressing their belief that Inter were 'sore losers', and was 'a club with a history of excuses'.
This evening, Inter have released a statement in response, and it really does not look great as they are attempting to take the high road by playing the "obsessed" card...
Statement from F.C. Internazionale: proud of our history, focused on the future ? https://t.co/UlaQF38owJ #FCIM
— F.C. Internazionale (@Inter_en) February 9, 2017
MILAN - In reply to recent comments in the media, Inter finds it hard to understand why Juventus keeps talking about us when our focus has never been on them. The fact there is always such a lot of attention on Inter is confirmation of the importance of our club.
We have, politely and through the appropriate channels, sought to discuss what we feel were debatable refereeing decisions in a match that was important not only to us, but also to the whole of Serie A. Now we are thinking only about the future, without forgetting that we played well in Turin despite the final result.
We all have a past. We have ours and we're proud of it.
Wow.
"Inter finds it hard to understand why Juventus keeps talking about us..." is a barely believable statement to make for a club of their size.
AS Roma's Radja Naiggolan has also been moaning about the supposed favouritism that Juventus are shown by referees, as he claimed that every time Juve win it is down to a penalty or a bad decision while speaking to the media this week, but comments made from a player are very different to an official statement from the club.
You would think they could have just said that they will either be taking their issue further, or that they are dropping it, but to say "If you guys are always talking about us we must be doing right" is the type of thing you see from a bitter fan after their team loses.
The parting line is a clear shot at Juve's history with match-fixing, and to be honest if that was the only thing said then it would have looked a lot better, but the drama in Italian football is not reflecting well on the league, which is a shame as it has been hugely entertaining to watch this season.
The '#Obsessed' line is never a good look for a random bloke on twitter, much less one of Europe's biggest football clubs.
[via Inter.it]
