Jose Mourinho slams referee for Juventus bias for sending off in Cremonese loss

Roma manager Jose Mourinho has accused referee Marco Serra for a pro-Juventus bias in his decision to send off the Portuguese during the Giallorossi’s loss to Cremonese.

The 19th-placed Serie A side picked up their first win of the season by beating Roma but the game saw Mourinho get sent off early in the second half. Later on, Mourinho also left the stands before the game entered stoppage time.

In an interview with DAZN (via TMW) after the game, Mourinho accused referee Serra for carrying a Juventus bias and for sending him off because a game against the Old Lady is coming up. He also said that he could not understand why he was sent off and he was never told the reason for being sent to the stands.

He stated: “I’m not crazy. For the reaction I got, you need to know what happened. Piccinini sent me off because the fourth official pushed him to do so. He doesn’t have the honesty to say what he said to me and what gave rise to my reaction. I want to know if there is an audio of what he said to me.

“I don’t want to go into the question that Serra is from Turin and he had me sent off in view of the Juventus game but for the first time in my career, a referee spoke to me in an unjustifiable way. I was lucky to have Piccinini as fourth official once when I was sent off, when I apologized to the referee for the lack of respect. Now he saw me enter the dressing room when I asked the fourth official for honesty. Serra had problems around memory, he forgot.”

In the post-game press conference, the Roma boss also stated that he was told in the referee’s dressing room that the fourth official had no words about the sending off, with the manager stating that the Giallorossi didn’t deserve to lose but they didn’t deserve to win either.

“There’s no excuse for tiredness, we played on Thursday and today is Tuesday. We were a bit unlucky, a ball and a half and conceded two goals but it’s our responsibility. There was a lack of intensity, the desire to end the match. It seemed that one team wanted to win more than another but that’s not true. The feeling is that one team was playing the game of their life, the other wasn’t. We didn’t deserve to lose but neither did we deserve to win, after the equalizer we all thought the winning goal could come. Then came the penalty, losing a game we didn’t deserve.”

Kaustubh Pandey | GIFN