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16th Mar 2017

Mark Clattenburg angers a whole new group of fans with contentious penalty call

This looked very harsh

Tom Victor

It’s not long until Mark Clattenburg will be making new friends and enemies away from the Premier League, but it looks like he is getting some practice in.

The English referee – whose next job will be in Saudi Arabia – was chosen by Uefa to take charge of the Europa League last-16 meeting between Borussia Mönchengladbach and Schalke 04.

The German clubs had drawn 1-1 in Gelsenkirchen in their first leg at the Veltins-Arena, with Guido Burgstaller cancelling out an early Jonas Hoffmann strike, and Gladbach looked set for a quarter-final berth when Andreas Christensen and Mahmoud Dahoud fired them into a 2-0 half-time lead.

But Leon Goretzka pulled one goal back, and then Clattenburg intervened, pointing to the penalty spot after Dahoud was ruled to have handled in the box.

Former Tottenham midfielder Nabil Bentaleb converted the spot-kick, but it’s fair to say plenty of people disagreed with the refereeing display.

Comments ranged from this…

https://twitter.com/CoutinOhOhOh/status/842488548561444864

To this…

To this…

And how could we forget this.

The complaints weren’t just in English, as you might expect from a clash between German teams, but he hasn’t been getting much benefit of the doubt in any language.

You can see the penalty – followed by a replay of the original handball call – here. Gladbach supporters certainly weren’t happy, and nor was their manager.

https://twitter.com/whufcammi/status/842491734944874496