Refereeing in football managed to somehow hit a new low this evening as the assistant referee for Manchester City vs Dortmund made a request to superstar Erling Haaland in the tunnel.
At full-time, Haaland was heading towards the away dressing room at the Etihad Stadium when the linesman stopped the ace, with the prolific striker going onto sign the official’s cards in a shock moment.
20-year-old Haaland dished out his autograph – one which is very valuable and will only become more so owing to his amazing development – on both the yellow and red cards.
This was done as both sets of players were heading down the tunnel, we’ve never seen anything like this and that’s for good reason, officials shouldn’t be seen getting gifts from the players they’re refereeing.
Haaland notched a brilliant assist in the Bundesliga outfit’s 2-1 defeat, offering an away goal to Dortmund that could help them overcome the deficit and spark a massive upset in the second-leg.
See More: Video: Erling Haaland and Phil Foden caught laughing and joking post-match amid Man City transfer talk
A referee’s assistant should not be asking a player for autographs after a match in the tunnel as happened with Haaland.
UEFA won’t want to see this surely pic.twitter.com/nA94n3k27W— Rob Harris (@RobHarris) April 6, 2021
Pictures from BT Sport.
Here is what Hargreaves had to say on the matter on BT Sport:
“To the answer, no Jake. Look, he shouldn’t be anyway. They had a job to do and they had a really difficult first-half, got a lot of things wrong in that first-half.”
“Even, the guys that do that job, you can be a fan, but you can’t do that in front of the other players. It just doesn’t look right.”
The linesman really better have a good excuse – if there even is any – for this kind of behaviour. Just when it seemed like Haaland couldn’t get any better, even the match officials love the Norwegian…