To be fair, Antonio Conte probably doesn’t believe his own defence of Victor Moses.
Conte had to comment on his player, who was sent off in unceremonious fashion after attempting to trick the referee into awarding a penalty to the Blues midway through the second half of Saturday’s FA Cup final.
Chelsea were chasing the game, which they ultimately lost 2-1 to Arsenal, and it was clear that desperation mode had been entered when Moses, who had been booked ten minutes earlier, made the bizarre decision to hit the deck under a non-existent challenge from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
The makeshift Arsenal wing-back clearly pulled out of the tackle but Moses went down like a sack of spuds and was promptly given his marching orders by Anthony Taylor, making the Chelsea man only the fifth player to be sent off in an FA Cup final.
Unwanted history https://t.co/PkF2yRXWsq
— JOE (@JOE_co_uk) May 28, 2017
Conte was always going to be asked about the incident after the game but the Italian was never going to throw his player under the bus so he arrived at one of the most preposterous excuses you could imagine.
Rather than accept that Moses had attempted to deceive the official, Conte claimed that the 26-year-old suddenly got very tired as he entered the box and decided to have a little lie-down for himself.
“There is a lot of tension in these moments and sometimes you could be tired,” Conte told Chelsea’s official website.
“I don’t think if my player dived he did it with a real intention of doing it.
“We have arrived at the end of the season and many players are tired, and then there is a lot of pressure.
“It’s not a good situation to dive, for sure, but Moses is an honest player and if he did this it’s only because he was tired.
“He didn’t want to cheat the referee,” added Conte.
Seems legit.
