Italian media have made the case that Inter Milan received a “soft” penalty to open the scoring against Udinese yesterday.
Today’s print edition of Turin-based newspaper Tuttosport, via FCInterNews, characterize the decision to award the Nerazzurri a spot kick in the first half as “debatable.”
For more than half an hour, Inter dominated possession in yesterday’s match without fashioning the decisive opportunity to score.
Whilst there were plenty of promising moves, the final ball was not quite there.
Therefore, Inter needed some spark to really ignite the match and go ahead.
That ended up coming in the form of a penalty kick.
Inter captain Lautaro Martinez had gotten the wrong side of Udinese defender Nehuen Perez. And Perez lunged out with an arm on the Nerazzurri striker’s shoulder.
Martinez felt the contact and went down. He was absolutely insistent that there was enough of a drag-back for a penalty.
Referee Marco Di Bello did not immediately point to the spot.
But after the VAR gave him some advice, the official went over to his monitor. On second viewing, Di Bello had no doubts – he gave Inter the chance to take the lead from the spot.
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Hakan Calhanoglu promptly buried his effort.
This was a key moment in the match.
Having finally broken through, the pressure was fully off of Inter. And the Nerazzurri went on to score twice more in the space of less than ten minutes.
The penalty certainly represented the moments that the “floodgates opened” so to speak.
Tuttosport ask – was it really a penalty, though?
There is no doubt that Perez had his arm on Martinez’s shoulder.
And the Inter captain was absolutely convinced that it was enough for a penalty.
But for Tuttosport, there are one or two questions. The contact looked fairly light in the view of the newspaper.
But then, those are the margins that can decide matches.