I'm not sure the corruption we are dealing with in the UCL - in terms of refereeing is that blatant. I'm in no doubt that UEFA have a cash machine that they want to maximise - hence the totally unfair seeding system. You see widespread bias towards teams from the 'bigger countries' in the earlier rounds - it is clear UEFA want England, Spain, Germany and Italy represented in the latter stages to drive advertising revenues etc. There is clear bias as we have witnessed towards the bigger teams - probably because again UEFA profit from the likes of Real Madrid and Barca being in the high profile latter stages. The UCL is not purely a knockout football tournament it's a football equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest - designed to rake cash in from all across Europe and the world - and an elite list of teams fulfill UEFAs requirements for marketing a final - FC Bayern versus Real Madrid works, Bucharest versus PSV does not. The list of finalists is notably more 'elite' in the Champions League era when compared to the European Cup era - for obvious reasons. I don't think there's too much evidence of referees being told to ensure specific results but they certainly do support a wider agenda of favouring specific teams or teams from particular countries. Last nights ref clearly favoured Barcelona but he couldn't; without it being too obvious - do sufficient- to influence the result - he did however, deny City a clear penalty, allowed Busquets to remain on the pitch when he could (and should) have earned 4 yellow cards - in a tighter game that could have influenced the result thankfully we had enough (last night) to win despite the ref.
I agree with most of this.
Nevertheless, I think that the assumption that tonight's ref had a bad game and wasn't intentionally referring the game in favor of Barca is the correct interpretation barring a lot of evidence otherwise.
Let's suppose that UEFA is totally corrupt.
Which would draw a bigger international crowd - Barca v. Madrid or City v. Barca (or Madrid)? I think that the latter would most likely draw a bigger audience.
Then, there's the conspiracy angle.
UEFA management met with all the officials prior to any match. And managed to keep these meetings secret. And they disclosed that whatever happens guys, a Barca/Madrid/maybe Bayern final must happen - we'll make much more money that way. And, oh by the way, we'll pay you more to make that happen (or maybe you won't referee a championship match if things don't go the way we want).
Or maybe such a meeting never occurred. But it was heavily implied. But for some reason, no ref, English refs included, reported this coercion.
Uh, what?
That's Collin Bell-tin hat stuff.
A Barca-City final would be a huge draw - hell, any of Barca/Madrid/Bayern v. City would be huge. Not clear at all why you'd favor Barca even if you were corrupt and just wanted the biggest draw possible for the final.
Tonight's official had a bad game - most dubious calls went in favor of Barca.
If he were on the take, no way we'd have won that game as he could easily have sent Sterling off and could have disallowed one of our goals, carding Kun for a hand ball.
