‘I don’t understand why he’s not in his own country’ – Steve Clarke blasts referee as Armstrong denied ‘100%’ penalty’
STEVE CLARKE slammed UEFA for appointing an Argentine ref as Scotland crashed out of the Euros.
Clarke reckons whistler Facundo Tello blundered by failing to award Stuart Armstrong a crucial penalty.
Hungary snatched the win in the TENTH minute of stoppage time to send the Tartan Army home.
But raging Clarke hit out: “The moment in the game for me is the penalty incident.
“It’s one hundred percent a penalty and someone has to explain to me why it’s not a penalty.
“Because otherwise I’m thinking there’s something wrong.
“Did I have a conversation with the officials? What’s the point, he’s from Argentina.
“What’s the point? Why is it not a European referee? Trying to be clever, I dunno, I don’t understand.
“I don’t understand why he’s here and not in his own country refereeing a game.
“I don’t understand how VAR can look at that and say it’s not a penalty.
“That’s just my opinion.
“It’s 100 percent a penalty.
“Somebody somewhere has to explain to me why that’s not a penalty.
“It’s 100 percent and in a one-goal game, had we got that penalty, it could have been a different night.
“I’ve got other words but I’m not going to use them.
“In a European competition it might have been better to have a European referee.
“But we had European VAR. Maybe the referee didn’t see the challenge clearly on the pitch but what’s the purpose of VAR if they’re not going to come in on something like that.
“It’s a penalty.”
Scotland crashed out of the competition with just one point from three games.
But Clarke insists he needs time to pinpoint where it went wrong.
He added: “I think it’s very difficult to sit here and analyse and I understand why you are asking the question.
“But sometimes after a defeat like that you need a bit of time to digest everything and work out how the game went and why it went that way.
“We had a lot of the ball and we probably didn’t create enough.
“But we did create enough chances before the goal – that’s clear.
“Is that why we went out of the tournament? Well, we scored two goals this time and we only scored one the last time.
“But it’s something for me to go away and think about and speak to my coaches, to try to work on something going into the future as to how we can score more goals at certain times in games.
“It was a tough night for us, we couldn’t do what we wanted to do.
“We suffer together and are sad together, we’re as sad as the supporters are because at the end of the day we are all supporters.
“We want to do well for our country but unfortunately it wasn’t our night.
“The goal comes as a consequence of us trying to win the game so the goal, for me, is almost irrelevant.
“It was always a one-goal game, we didn’t manage to get the goal and obviously opened up at the end to try to get it.
“The overriding feeling, rather than analysing the game, is to be sad for the supporters, sad for the country and the players are just as sad as everyone else.
Hungary striker Barnabas Varga required urgent medical attention after an ugly penalty box collision.
Clarke added: “I hope the lad who is injured is okay because it looked pretty bad.”
Keep up to date with ALL the latest news and transfers at the Scottish Sun football page