Unai Emery accuses referee of Real Madrid bias after PSG's last-16 first-leg defeat

The PSG manager felt more decisions went 'in favour of Real Madrid'

Unai Emery still felt his side were hard done by in Madrid (Getty)

Paris Saint-Germain manager Unai Emery claimed referee Gianluca Rocchi gave more decisions “in favour of Real Madrid” in his side’s 3-1 Champions League last-16 first-leg defeat at the Bernabeu, and argued it would have been a different result had the officiating been different, such was his team’s superiority.

The visitors had arguably been the better side for around 83 minutes, when Cristiano Ronaldo hit his 101st goal in the competition for Real Madrid to make it 2-1 and set the defending champions on the way to victory.

That goal saw an apparent foul from the Portuguese in the build-up, and there was an earlier undetected handball in the box from Sergio Ramos, against a soft decision on Giovani Di Celso that gave Ronaldo the penalty for his first goal. Rocchi did however spare Neymar what would have been a justified second booking for diving.

Emery still felt his side were hard done by, as he pointed more to the decisions dictating the general flow of the game.

“His tendency was to whistle more in favour of Real Madrid,” the PSG coach argued. “We saw that in the cards, the fouls and the penalty. You can give it. It wasn’t [a penalty] for me. The handball for Ramos I did not see but they say it was a handball and a penalty. It’s not the same criteria.

“The team played a good match with a bad result. It’s a 3-1 but that does not reflect what was seen on the pitch. With different refereeing, it would have been a different result.

“It’s not one player or the ref. We all play a part. There were decisions that clearly damaged us. They scored when we were at our best.”

Real boss Zinedine Zidane meanwhile insisted he was going to say “nothing” about the refereeing.

“Nada. I’m not going to talk about that. We have to be happy about what we did against a very good opponent. We got a good result. Today. Today.

“Now we know that the return game will be very difficult and we saw that last year. When you play away from home anything can happen. We know how hard it will be but today we’re happy and very proud of everyone.”