Europa League Final: WATCH - Referee Anthony Taylor and family harassed by Roma fans at Budapest airport
WATCH - Referee Anthony Taylor and family harassed by Roma fans at airport
Anthony Taylor - one of the match referees in the Europa League Final, alongside his family, was harassed and attacked by Roma fans at the Budapest airport in a shocking turn of events. As per videos doing rounds on social media, fans hurled insulting remarks at him, with one of them even throwing a chair, which narrowly missed him.
The incident happened against the backdrop of Roma fans getting angry over a clear-cut penalty not given by him during the finale, which saw Sevilla winning the league for a record seventh time in the penalty shootout.
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After 120 minutes, the scoreline read 1-1, and the match went into a penalty shootout, where Sevilla won by a 4-1 margin.
In the video given below, Taylor and his family were ambushed by the fans, with some of them also throwing beverages at them.
You can watch the videos here–
Not only this but Roma manager Jose Mourinho also criticised Taylor after the game while waiting for him in the parking lot.
After the final ended, Mourinho, who was given a silver medal for his team standing second in the contest, gave it away to a fan in the crowd.
When asked about Taylor during the post-match presser, Mourinho expressed his displeasure over the umpiring during the game that saw Roma fall second.
"It was an intense, masculine, vibrant game with a referee who seemed Spanish. It was yellow, yellow, yellow all the time," Mourinho said.
Other than him, Roma general manager Tiago Pinto, also questioned Taylor’s umpiring in a statement to Italian news agency ANSA on Thursday.
“We at AS Roma don’t want to raise doubts about Sevilla’s merits. We believe that with our opponents we put on a great final and honoured the stage offered to us by UEFA in the best way,” Pinto said.
“We don’t usually comment immediately about these types of situations but over the course of today we’ve analysed both the most glaring incidents and those seemingly less evident and it is clear that in disciplinary terms, the refereeing of the match was not balanced,” Pinto said.
With Roma also finishing sixth on the points table in the Serie A this time, they missed out on a chance of playing in the Champions League next season. It has also cast some doubts over Mourinho’s future at the club, who, at least for now, said he would get back on this in a few days.
PGMOL condemns the attack on Taylor
The Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) - an English top-tier referees association, said in a statement, “We are appalled at the unjustified and abhorrent abuse directed at Anthony and his family as he tries to make his way home from refereeing the UEFA Europa League final.
"We will continue to provide our full support to Anthony and his family,” the referees association added.
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