Czech referee dashes Qarabag's knockout stage hopes

/By AzerNews/

By Mushvig Mehdiyev

Despite its enthusiastic and brilliant performance, Azerbaijan's FC Qarabag made a goalless draw with Italian FC Internazionale and missed the chance of becoming the first Azerbaijani club reaching the knockout stage at a European football contest.

Hearts of all Azerbaijanis beat with FC Qarabag on December 11, when the country's "knights" in European football hosted the Italian FC Internazionale at Tofig Bahramov stadium, in Baku before the eyes of tens of thousands of fans.

Qarabag needed a victory against Inter to proceed to the last 32 of the UEFA Europa League competition. It was the night for Qarabag to seal the greatest ever milestone in the history of Azerbaijani football.

All efforts went in vain, as the Czech referee unfairly disallowed a match-winning strike of Qarabag deep in the extra time when Richard Almeida's shot find the net at 90+4 minute of the game. The ball took a deflection and beat Inter goalkeeper Juan Pablo Carrizo, but the referee wrongly ruled out Qarabag's decent goal for offside.

In the other match of the group, Ukrainian Dnipro secured a 1-0 triumph over French St Etienne and leapfrogged Qarabag into second place to join Inter in the next round of the competition.

Qarabag's European journey was blatantly stopped by an unfair decision of a biased referee.

Qarabag's Manager Gurban Gurbanov said the scored goal was decent.

"I cannot understand why the referee ruled out our goal. Even the player of Inter confessed that it was a goal. It was a great blow on Qarabag. But, unfortunately, it is impossible to change the result anymore," he said, thanking his players and fans for a great football show.

Despite this injustice , Qarabag deserve the best of love and respect. Azerbaijani fans will never forget their happiest days with the team's victory. All in Azerbaijan hope and believe that Azerbaijan's "European knights" will keep going on with their successes.