Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal has blamed his right-back Rafael da Silva for conceding Leicester City’s first penalty in their historic 5-3 win over United.
Managers often blame the referees when their side concedes a penalty, regularly swearing blind that the spot kick shouldn’t have stood despite it being plain to see for everyone else that it was the right call.
Manchester United’s Louis van Gaal has gone in the opposite direction however, blaming his own player Rafael da Silva for the incident.
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The turning point in the game at the King Power Stadium was when Rafael conceded a very soft penalty against Leicester’s Jamie Vardy, with the referee blowing his whistle and pointing to the spot despite the Brazilian seemingly being fouled by Vardy seconds earlier.
Van Gaal insists that the blame lies with Rafael rather than referee Mark Clattenburg however, with the right-back supposed to know better than to even give the official the option to award the penalty.
“For the first penalty it is always the referee [who you talk about] but you don’t have to do that as a player,” the Dutchman said.
“You know you are in the penalty area and you allow the referee to whistle if you make a challenge, I don’t know if it is a penalty but we have to look at ourselves because we made such big errors as a team.”
“I cannot say that I am happy.”
In Rafael’s defence it was an exceedingly soft penalty, and the entire team were at fault for the loss so blame certainly cannot be attributed to one individual.