| Only
one man in it this week, one of our old favourites Daudén
Ibáñez. With nine out of the ten league games finished, it looked
like being a dull weekend, only 26 goals scored up to then, no penalties, only
43 yellow cards, no sendings off and no own goals. But when Daudén is on
the telly anything could happen, and he single handedly transformed the
weekend's statistics with a display of refereeing that could only happen in
Spain. Valencia were a goal up at half time in Sunday evening's televised game,
and they appeared to be heading for second place in the table. But two
penalties in a ten minute period at the start of the second half, both dubious
and both converted by Celta's Karpin, left the visitors reeling. Karpin
completed his hat-trick and it appeared to be all over, but the unfortunate
Vagner but through his own net with two minutes to go. Then Daudén
decided the story needed a twist and invented another penalty in the sixth
minute of injury time, some two minutes after the game should have finished
according to the fourth referee. To most people it appeared that Pellegrino had
dived, but Daudén produced a red card for poor Vagner and pointed to the
spot. This time though Cavallero saved from Kily to win the match for Celta.
Daudén finished the game with 10 yellow cards and a red to his name, and
got his picture on the front cover of most sports papers. A sterling (or should
we say Peseta) performance. Valencia's manager Héctor Cúper could
well get himself penalized for the not very nice things he said about the
referee after the game. (19.03.01) |
