Swiss referee Sandro Scharer showed too much leniency with heavy challenges in his officiating of yesterday evening’s Champions League clash between Inter and Viktoria Plzen.
This is the view of today’s print edition of Rome-based newspaper Corriere dello Sport, who note that the match official could have handed out more bookings than he did on what was a very physical encounter.
Scharer sent off Plzen midfielder Pavel Bucha, but he needed the assistance of VAR to finally give the 24-year-old a straight red card, having initially given the very late and high tackle just a yellow card.
The hosts could well have been down to ten much earlier than that, after Denzel Dumfries appeared to have been clearly held back when through on goal but was not deemed to be through on goal.
Meanwhile, a number of other tackles by the Plzen players appeared to be right on the edge of being bookings but were only whistled as fouls, whilst both Barella and Dumfries got away with heavy tackles on Plzen defender Vaclav Jemelka.
