Manchester United’s 1-0 win over Chelsea ended a 9 year winless drought at Stamford Bridge. It was a well contested game in the only competitive quarter-final fixture in the Champions League. Say what you want but barring something miraculous, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Schalke have all but sealed passage to the next round.
United will now take what is a rather huge away goal and momentum from this game as they await Chelsea at Old Trafford next Tuesday. Of course when a game is as closely contested as this one, there will always be that one call that will leave players, coaches and fans up in arms. The call I’m talking about of course, is the “penalty call” that wasn’t when Patrice Evra felled Ramires in the penalty box deep into injury time.
You didn’t really need a replay to see that a penalty should have been awarded. However, match referee Albert Undiano Mallenco saw different and didn’t make a call. Fernando Torres didn’t help matters when he flopped a few moments later, earning himself a yellow card and the wrath of Rio Ferdinand.
During their encounter on March 1, Chelsea was awarded a penalty when Chris Smalling appeared to have fouled Yuri Zhirkov in the box. However, replays showed that there wasn't any contact between the two players. Lampard stepped up and fired home what ended up being the game winning goal.
So, United got away with one and Chelsea has to feel hard done by another penalty call falling on deaf ears. In their previous encounters against United where the outcome of the game was determined by a penalty, Chelsea got the benefit of the doubt. While I’m tempted to call it “poetic justice”, I won’t; two wrongs don’t make it right.
All in all, United were deserved winners and one bad call shouldn’t take away anything from them. Sometimes you get the breaks, other times you don’t.
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