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Arne Slot responded to Oliver Glasner's claims that it would be “dangerous for football” if the referee stopped the play every time a goalkeeper went to the floor, with a passionate rant about referee standards.
The Liverpool head coach has bemoaned referee decisions in the past and claimed the Reds have been on the receiving end of several unfair decisions this season.
That includes Saturday’s 3-1 win over Crystal Palace, with the Eagles’ goal coming in controversial circumstances. Daniel Munoz lofted the ball into the goal in the 71st minute as Freddie Woodman lay prone on the deck following a collision with Ismaila Sarr.
Slot was livid at the time, exchanging words with Glasner in the opposition dugout, but as referee Andy Madley had not stopped the play, there was no reason for the goal to be disallowed.
While Slot expressed some sympathy with Palace, and Glasner’s views, he stated the Reds have been punished this season for not deploying the game’s dark arts more often.
Asked about Glasner’s comments and whether keepers could look to time waste if they knew the referee would immediately blow the whistle, Slot replied: “I know that is going to happen because that is what I constantly see in the Premier League or everywhere around the world.
“Since we know the referee can stop the game if there a head injury I see a lot of players who get touched [elsewhere] and then hold their head and the referee falls into the trap.
“It has not been a tactic used to make a save and fall on the floor. I see a difficult situation, but this situation wasn’t difficult. The ball fell 30/40 yards out from the goal. That is not a smart tactic from a goalkeeper to go down if you don’t have an injury, is it?
“And the player that took the shot might say he was not aware the goalkeeper was on the floor. But if one of my players tries to take a shot like that, if he thinks there is a goalkeeper in the goal, I would ask him, that is not the smartest ball to play.
“I do agree what he [Glasner] is saying, so from now on, if a goalkeeper is on the floor and the referee stops the game, I am 100 percent sure that there will be teams in the future who use that tactic.”
In a passionate rant from Slot, he also referenced when the play wasn’t stopped when Alexis Mac Allister had a head injury aganist Manchester United, only for Bryan Mbuemo to score.
“The amount of times that players were pretending they were injured and referees buy into this, it has become a tactic in football,” he said.
“The amount of times the referee stops the play - you can probably feel my big frustration about this.
“People saying ‘you always talk about the Paris Saint-Germain game’. Yeah, there was no diving, there was just fair football. The amount of times games have been stopped because players have been pretended to be injured - that has happened so many times that I can’t believe when you are refereeing Liverpool and there is a goalkeeper on the floor and the referee doesn’t stop the game.”
Liverpool’s 3-1 win, secured via goals from Alexander Isak, Andy Robertson and Florian Wirtz, saw Liverpool move eight points clear of sixth-place Brighton in the race for the Champions League places.
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