Lucescu: “Pineda wrestled with Sastre in the goal – We were playing in an arena, the Athens teams are protected”

With him Erik Lamela scoring his first goal in the shirt of AEK, the Union prevailed 1-0 against PAOK and took the lead in qualifying for the semi-finals of the Betsson Hellenic Cup.

After the match, Razvan Lucescu expressed his grievances about the refereeing at the press conference, citing numerous phases where he felt his team had been wronged. At the same time, he pointed out that “a system attacks against some groups and protects groups of Athens”.

In detail what he said:

“First of all, it’s not easy to play so many games together. AEK plays one match a week, it doesn’t play in Europe, we also play in Europe and bring matches to Greece. We played three matches in one week. And AEK had an extra day of rest and this is not a sign of respect for the organizer towards a team that plays in Europe. But about the match? Every touch of ours was a foul and we played in an arena and didn’t get fouled. Let me tell you that in the goal phase there was a foul on Sastre, in Lovren’s red phase there was a foul on Samata.

Pineda wrestled Sastre down in the goal phase and I see things like that again on the same field. Sometimes you can get angry, I don’t want to offend anyone, but these are the facts, we are fighting against a system. Sometimes we play well, sometimes not but we try to survive. A system attacks against some teams and protects Athens teams. I’ve been through many moments, a system that protects others, they give stolen titles.”

For the match:

“The first half completely belonged to AEK, it was fresh, it had tension, but the second half was different. Until the point where the referee decided to help AEK in the goal phase (Pineda’s foul on Sastre). After the match was equalised, we had our chance too. And of course we were left with ten players, because quite simply the referee did not give a foul at the beginning of Samata’s phase. Of course, I have to say that again VAR slept in some phases. A few weeks ago we saw phases against us, yesterday we saw a penalty against us… It’s a shame today for this referee. I don’t want to say more and we will continue to fight and we will fight in the second match as well. Thank you… I can’t because Italian referees are coming, they are affected.”