In a thrilling encounter between Brighton and Liverpool on Sunday, Roberto De Zerbi, the Brighton manager, admitted that his team was fortunate to earn a free-kick that led to a 2-2 draw.
However, De Zerbi believes that Brighton should have been awarded a penalty in the second half when Virgil van Dijk appeared to handle Kaoru Mitoma’s wayward strike.
Despite acknowledging his admiration for Jürgen Klopp, whom he considers one of the world’s best coaches, De Zerbi disagreed with Klopp over the penalty incident.
“I love Klopp,” De Zerbi said. “He can do what he wants because I have a big respect and I consider him one of the best coaches in the world. I like his behaviour and when he says something, 99 per cent of the time I agree with him. In that situation I think there was a clear penalty and I told the referee in a good way I think.
“I think there was a penalty but not a foul for when we scored the second goal. I’m honest and I told Jürgen my opinion and my idea.”
De Zerbi also addressed another contentious moment involving Pascal Groß, who conceded the first-half penalty that Mohamed Salah converted. Although Groß fouled Dominik Szoboszlai inside the box, he was not shown a red card. De Zerbi pointed out other instances where similar decisions went against Brighton in previous matches, suggesting inconsistency in refereeing decisions.
“If you speak like this, you have to analyze offside for the goal against Aston Villa, the third goal (last week),” De Zerbi added. “You have to analyze last season in the Crystal Palace game, we scored a 100 per cent regular goal. In the Leicester game, there was a clear penalty.
“We can speak until tomorrow night and we’re not able to find an agreement. It was a penalty but I spoke two minutes ago, the Dunk goal wasn’t a foul. I am one of the most honest when I come to speak with the journalists.
“It’s a good point, I think in the 90 minutes we played better than Liverpool. Especially in the first half. We closed it losing 2-1 but we conceded two goals in a very bad way.
“We didn’t understand how we were losing at that moment. In the second half they could have closed the game before we could score. In general, it was a good game, both teams played well.”
