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After his team's match in the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round in Athens against the local team "AEK" ended in a 3-0 defeat, the head coach of Edinburgh, Lithuanian Valdas Ivanauskas, vented his anger on the Russian referee Yuri Baskakov.
In the Wednesday match, the Frenchman Julien Brellier received his second yellow card in the 30th minute, just four minutes after his first one. The first time J.Brellier was punished for running onto the field with an earring.
"The referee in such important matches was just unbelievable," said the enraged Lithuanian. "It's ridiculous. Before the match, he checked each player's shoes and rings twice, and he didn't notice anything. And then during the match, he gave a yellow card."
J.Brellier received his second yellow card after hitting opponent Vladim Ivičić with his elbow in the middle of the field.
"If this happened in basketball, it wouldn't even have been considered a foul," V.Ivanauskas said.
In the middle of the second half, V.Ivičić was also involved in the expulsion of a second "Hearts" player. In the middle of the field, Edinburgh's defender Neil McCann kicked V.Ivičić with a straight leg, and the referee immediately showed a red card.
"The referee decided it was a foul. I have my opinion, but I don't want to say anything," V.Ivanauskas stated.
Viewers watching the match on TV could clearly see that the Brazilian Julio Cesar, who scored two goals for "AEK," had a ring on his hand throughout the match. However, Athens' coach, Spanish Lorenzo Serra Ferreras, refused to comment on this matter.
"It's not my job to check rings and other things. I care only about the game, and today we deserved the victory," the coach said.
The referee J.Baskakov, who received a lot of criticism for questionable decisions in Wednesday's match, is quite familiar to Lithuanian football fans. In March 2005, during the qualifiers for the 2006 World Cup match as guests with the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team, this same referee sent off Lithuanian Marius Stankevičius just minutes after scoring the equalizing goal for a questionable foul against Mirsad Bešlija.
