'Very frustrating' - Angry Man City punished by embarrassing UEFA decision

Manchester City made mistakes in their UEFA Youth League game but a trio of officials got a crucial call wrong

Manchester City were denied a penalty in the UEFA Youth League defeat to Villarreal after three officials failed to spot a foul in the penalty area. The referee, supported by a linesman and the fourth official on the same side, agreed that Floyd Samba had been brought down but chose to give a free-kick rather than a spot kick.

The incident came in the 70th minute of the game in Villarreal as City were fighting to get back into the match. Two first-half goals had given the hosts the lead but Divine Mukasa had pulled one back for Ben Wilkinson's side and they were pushing for an equaliser when sub Samba collected Ryan McAidoo's ball inside the box and was brought down.

"He's definitely in the area, he's not even on the line - he's inside of the line," said City club commentator Ali Mann. "I'm not quite sure how the officials haven't seen that. It's not a difficult decision to have made but he's got that one wrong."

Mukasa smashed the subsequent free-kick against the post and the chance was gone, with City unable to find an equaliser in the final 20 minutes. Wilkinson was one of 11 booked from both sides in a chaotic match that saw tempers fray as the referee struggle to handle the occasion.

City's coach was in no doubt that his players only had themselves to blame for their 2-1 defeat after gifting their opponents two goals with poor defending. However, it is not a great look for UEFA for their flagship youth competition when three officials all failed to see that Samba was clearly inside the box when he was fouled in the second half.

"I've not seen it but I've been told it was a penalty," Wilkinson told the Manchester Evening News. "That's very frustrating because you hope that they get these things right but from an educational and development point of view these guys know how to win games.

"In terms of what you are going to get in senior football, it's real. You can't control the referee or the opposition, we can just control our own actions and how we perform and if we were better with our work in our first half we wouldn't have allowed that to be a factor in the game.

"You have to be careful with how you tackle in this competition and certainly when the game becomes like it does the tone is set for anything and how the opposition reacts to any sort of contact anywhere it creates this atmosphere around the game. Whether it is right or wrong, we've all seen it happen so ideally we want to try and create players who can adapt on the pitch and smell that and adapt our behaviours to try and make sure that ultimately when players go down and the physio comes on and we lose rhythm, when we are chasing we need to keep the ball in play as much as we can.

"I think there are some instances where you may as well tell the team not to tackle because we were in such a strong way in the game that as long as we ran alongside them and competed we would have won the ball. It's a good lesson. Although you're disappointed in the performance of the officials, it is what it is.

"The way we conceded the two goals and some parts of our game were unacceptable and not in line with what we are trying to produce. That has ultimately cost us the game."

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