Very upset after the 3-1 defeat of PSG in Nantes, the Parisian sporting director Leonardo castigated the “uncontrolled” arbitration of Mikaël Lesage on Saturday evening, accusing him of not having protected his players and of having wanted to whistle “against” the Parisian club.
“It’s Paris Saint-Germain, I don’t whistle!”
It had been a long time since Leonardo had made a post-match outing. Face closed, features drawn, the sporting director wanted to react after the many problems between the referee of the meeting and his players: “There are so many faults on our players. But he says no, no, it’s Neymar, it’s Mbappé, I’m not whistling! It’s Messi, I’m not whistling, it’s Paris Saint- Germain, I’m not whistling!”
For 4 minutes, Leonardo slalomed between questions about his team’s performance and the complicated relationship with the referee “An example with Appiah who does not take the second yellow card when the penalty is whistled (on Mbappé). A second yellow is red, that’s obvious.” And to conclude “There’s a thing being created where everything is against us. All things today were against us and I’m talking about refereeing facts that are clear.”
“Maybe I’m wrong. Ok, we lost, we accept defeat. We will learn from this. There are a lot of mistakes, things we didn’t do well. We must know after a Champions League match to behave in Ligue 1 in a certain way. Well, we’ll talk about that. But, with the referee, it felt like ”poom poum poum, I’m shooting you.”
This is the second time in a month that PSG has pointed out problems with arbitration in Ligue 1. Against Brest, Kylian Mbappé had tackled … Mikaël Lesage and his assistants “You don’t even know how to referee here. It’s always the same in this league.”