ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: ARSENE WENGER has risked the wrath of Uefa by mounting a renewed attack on the Swedish referee who presided over Arsenal's defeat in Porto on Wednesday, claiming Martin Hansson is "incompetent or dishonest, I prefer to think incompetent" and unfit to work at the highest level.
Although Wenger stressed that he believed Hansson was guilty of nothing more sinister than ineptitude, he went on to claim that he has been a victim of corruption in the past and hinted that the governing body has not done enough to eradicate it from European football.
The Frenchman’s main gripe with Hansson – the referee who missed Thierry Henrys handball in France’s World Cup play-off against the Republic of Ireland last November – relates to the mistakes he claims the referee made before Porto’s winning goal on Wednesday.
Hansson awarded Porto an indirect free-kick after judging that Lukasz Fabianski had picked up a deliberate backpass from Sol Campbell. As Arsenal players disputed that decision the referee handed the ball to Porto’s Ruben Michail, who passed it to Falcao to score. Wenger said he sought the opinion of other referees after the match, who he claims confirmed that Hansson had made “five technical mistakes in that one moment”.
“For me the backpass is accidental but he has judged it is voluntary. Okay, we have a difference there, I can accept that,” said Wenger. “But afterwards he makes so many technical mistakes that are not linked to judgment.
“I wanted to understand what happened on the free-kick, so I got some information from professional referees,” he continued. “They explained to me that he made five mistakes. First, he did not give the free-kick at the point where it happened. Then he was not in the right position. Then he did not put the players at the proper distance. Then he should never have given a quick free-kick once he is in the middle of the action. And finally he didn’t raise his arm until after the free-kick was taken, which is too late. These are technical points, so I believe he is incompetent. He has shown he is not up to it.”
Wenger called on Uefa to clarify the criteria it uses for selecting officials, saying that this was particularly important in view of past incidents of corruption around the continent.
“A lot of things have to be clarified at Uefa,” he said. “They have to be much more open about how they rate referees. Nobody knows really how or why they name them or how they rate them. The history of refereeing in Europe over the last 30 years is not very good for football. Too much has gone on.”
Wenger himself was the victim of corruption in France in 1993, when his Monaco team finished runners-up in the league behind Marseille, who were subsequently stripped of their title and demoted after it emerged that the club’s president, Bernard Tapie, was behind a plot to pay players from an opposing team, Valenciennes, to throw the last match of the season.
Wenger yesterday revealedthat he has managed a team in which players have been corrupted by opponents. “I’ve seen much worse (than Hansson’s alleged mistakes) in my life, my own players were bought,” he said.
Wenger refused to identify the team or players that he believes were bought, saying, “I do not want to come out about the past.”
Guardian Service
