Joe Cole seething with “dreadful” referee after West Ham draw v Lyon in Europa League
By Sam Stone
Joe Cole brandished referee Felix Zwayer as “dreadful” after West Ham were held to a 1-1 draw against Lyon at the London Stadium on Thursday night.
The contentious moment came on the stroke of half-time as Zwayer deemed Aaron Cresswell’s challenge on Moussa Dembele worthy of a red card.
Talking on BT Sport post-match on 7 April, Cole was far from pleased and suggested there should be an investigation.
Cole said: “The referee was dreadful for the first 45 minutes and needs to be looked at.
“I reckon even Dembele was surprised it was a straight red, he has to take it wide to get the shot off, if he takes the touch towards the goal, he knows Cresswell will slide in and win the ball.”
It wasn’t just the penalty decision that Cole was critical of. He then said: “The referee never grabbed hold of the game, in the first ten minutes the Lyon manager would’ve told his players to take the sting out of the game.
“To go down, to waste time, we had experienced players going down with cramp 20 minutes in and the referee is blowing the whistle.”
He added: “The Lyon players feed off that with the referee, you get away with one, you get away with another and Dembele, in his mind, felt Cresswell’s hand on his chest and he said, ‘I’m going down’.”
Never far from contention?
Zwayer has never been far from controversy, in 2005 the German referee was involved in a match-fixing scandal in which he took 300 Euros to ‘avoid critical scenes’ in a Bundesliga 2 fixture.
And as recently as this season, England International Jude Bellingham was fined £34,000 for comments on Zwayer’s performance in Borussia Dortmund’s loss to Bayern Munich.
The London Stadium was seething after seeing their side go down to ten men and will, undoubtedly, hold the German accountable for their failure to head to the Groupama Stadium without a lead.
Zwayer’s decision to send Cresswell off was perhaps vindicated, given the presence of VAR and the decision not to overturn the decision.
However, as David Moyes referred to in his post-match interview, there looked a clear foul on Jarrod Bowen in the lead up to Cresswell’s red cad.
Zwayer’s failure to remain consistent and in control means the Hammers now face a tough task heading to France with the tie finely poised at 1-1.
In other West Ham news, Jason Cundy was similarly outraged at the incident as he exploded live on talkSPORT.
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