The Croatia manager Niko Kovac has continued his attack on Yuichi Nishimura, the referee from the opening game of the World Cup, after the Japanese official controversially awarded Brazil a penalty in the home side’s 3-1 victory on Thursday night.
Kovac was outspoken in the press conference after the game, saying: “If anybody saw this was a penalty anywhere in the stadium, raise their hands. If you continue like this you will have 100 penalties.” However, he was even harsher in his criticism when speaking to the Croatian broadcaster HTV.
“If that was a penalty, we don’t need to play football any more,” he said. “Let’s play basketball. It’s a shame. We talk about respect, but that wasn’t respect – Croatia didn’t get any. If that’s how you start the World Cup, we’d all better give it up and go home.”
Dejan Lovren was judged to have fouled Brazil’s striker Fred, resulting in a penalty for the hosts. The Southampton defender was the most furious among Croatia players. “I can hardly hold back the tears,” he said. “Why don’t they just hand out the trophy to Brazil right away? Everything is going their way, everyone is saying they must win it, so why do we play then?
“The ref didn’t even speak English. I asked him why did he give the penalty and he just mumbled something. My team-mates tell me the same thing – how can you have an international ref who is officiating the opening match, but he doesn’t speak English and you can’t even speak to him?”
The captain Darijo Srna tried very hard to choose the right words. He said: “It’s hard to stay cool-headed after a defeat like that. We expected the referee to be biased, but not like this … You know, they always tell us about fair play, the refs even hold meetings with us captains about that – and then they do this. But we must begin our preparations for Cameroon, in five days nobody will ask us how we lost to Brazil.”