CELTIC MANAGER BRENDAN Rodgers likened modern football to a “computer game” after claiming Daizen Maeda was sent off following a needless VAR intervention in his side’s 6-0 defeat by Atletico Madrid.
Maeda saw a yellow card upgraded to red following a VAR review midway through the first half at the Estadio Metropolitano, but Rodgers felt referee made the right call initially.
The Japanese attacker dangled a leg in a 50-50 challenge with Mario Hermoso, who hurt himself as he followed through.
Celtic were already trailing to a deflected strike from Antoine Griezmann and Atletico took full advantage of the numerical superiority. Griezmann and Alvaro Morata both struck doubles, while Samuel Lino and Saul Niguez also scored as Atletico hit a string of spectacular second-half goals.
Rodgers said: “I think the red card is a big turning point. We started well, started with confidence, got into some really good areas. We then get a man sent off early, which was a huge disappointment because I didn’t feel it was a red card.
“When you watch the re-run, both players kick each other’s feet. The referee saw that in game time and then he is asked to look at it.
“The first image he sees is not representative of the actual challenge. You plant a seed when the first image he sees is Daizen Maeda’s foot up, but that wasn’t the challenge and it’s a really, really soft red card.
“The ref saw it in game time and didn’t deem it worthy of anything so serious, but it just feels like a computer game now, football. So many visits to the screen, so many influences in the game.
“As time has gone on you see the influence of VAR and the difficulties referees have. There’s a lot of judgements going on away from the field.
“It’s not so much the technology, but how it is implemented. It’s not something I enjoy.
“When it first came out I was very much wanting to support it and hoped it would improve the game, because I think everyone thought the utopia of VAR would mean we would lose all these bad decisions.
“But you could argue there’s even more now. There’s a good percentage where it just doesn’t feel right in the game.”
Celtic remain bottom of Group E but are still not eliminated from the Champions League, although they will need to beat both Lazio and Feyenoord and hope Atletico do them some favours to stay in Europe beyond Christmas.
Rodgers said: “We knew we had to take something from this game, but with Lazio winning as well, our objective with two games to go is to get points and see if we can improve on last season’s points total.”
