“Unbelievable” what occurred towards Morocco: Messi; a “scandal”: Mascherano

Buenos Aires. Lionel Messi described the occasions on the opening of the boys’s Olympic soccer match between Argentina and Morocco as “uncommon” and Javier Mascherano as “scandalous.” The match was suspended on the finish because of incidents and resumed virtually two hours later with the Argentines’ equalising objective disallowed, they usually misplaced 2-1.

Messi expressed himself by means of a narrative on his Instagram account, the place he wrote “uncommon” accompanying the adjective with an emoji that was someplace between stunned and embarrassed.

Two hours after a match declared over by the official Paris 2024 web site, the gamers returned to the pitch, now with out followers within the stands of the Geoffroy Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne, to play three minutes of added time.

They needed to return with the information that the referee, the Swede Glenn Nyberg, disallowed the last-minute objective by Argentine midfielder Alan Medina, which might have meant the Albiceleste equalised, however which was dominated offside after a VAR assessment.

Round twenty Moroccan followers had invaded the pitch after Medina’s objective, forcing safety officers to enter, the police mentioned. Afp.

Bottles and glasses have been additionally thrown, forcing the referee to ask the gamers to return to the dressing room with out the ultimate whistle having been blown.

“They threw 1,000,000 issues at us,” Albiceleste coach Javier Mascherano instructed the Argentine press, describing what occurred as “a shame” and including that it had by no means occurred to him “that in a match of this degree safety failed seven instances,” referring to the repeated intrusion of followers onto the pitch in the course of the match.

“It is a scandal, it isn’t a neighborhood match, it is the Olympic Video games,” mentioned the coach.

Mascherano additionally reported that on Tuesday they suffered a theft on the coaching floor: “Thiago Almada’s watch and rings have been lacking, throughout a coaching session on the Olympic Video games, we did not wish to say something.”

Almada is likely one of the gamers who was a part of the Argentine squad that received the World Cup in Qatar 2022, and a few of his teammates from that crew additionally spoke out on social media about what occurred within the match.

“Greater than ever, with you guys, you may beat everybody,” wrote Rodrigo de Paul on his Instagram account, whereas Nicolás Tagliafico mentioned on X: “If it had been the opposite method round, I can not even think about what they’d be saying.”

The Argentine press additionally echoed it. The newspaper The nation He spoke of an “Olympic scandal” and “chaos in France” and the Clarion He described the episode as an “embarrassment in Olympic soccer.”