Spain players furious after Mbappe's controversial winner

Spain players furious after Mbappe's controversial winner

Spain were left feeling hard done by as they lost Sunday's Nations League final to a late strike from France's Kylian Mbappe, who appeared to be in an offside position.

Spain were confident that the goal would be chalked off but it was eventually allowed to stand, with the referee deciding that Eric Garcia made contact with the pass as he lunged to intercept it and that commenced a new phase of play, in which Mbappe could not be offside.

"To us on the field it (the second goal) looked offside," Busquets was quoted as saying in El Chiringuito TV by Goal.com. "The referee told us that since Eric tried to play the ball, the offside was cancelled, but that doesn't make sense.

"He just tried to intercept the ball, he didn't play it and lose control of it."

Barcelona defender Garcia was perplexed and asked if they should just be letting the ball go if they feel that someone in the opposition is offside.

"It was clearly offside. The referee told me that I tried to play the ball. What should I do? Step aside and let him run? Apparently, this is the rule."

Sky Sports pundit and former Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp was also not happy how the referees interpreted the laws of the game.

"You can see from the moment Theo Hernandez plays the ball, he's [Mbappe] definitely offside. But because of this delicate touch from Garcia, it's a new phase of play. But for me it isn't. It's a really poor interpretation of the rule. I don't like it and it feels unfair.

"It's so contentious. We want to see goals in football, of course we do. We're crying out for VAR to give more goals but this one feels really unfortunate for Spain in my point of view. I do feel sorry for the officials.

"It's not VAR's fault... it's the rule. It's been around for around 18 months this interpretation but I don't feel we've seen enough examples of it in big games for it to be such a talking point but it's certainly won a final today so it'll become a talking point now for sure."

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