Maradona has repeated his call for fair play at SA2010 – and questioned Luis Fabiano’s second strike on Sunday night.
Before the tournament began, Argentina manager Maradona asked referees to clamp down on bad tackles.
After watching Argentina’s win over Korea Republic Thursday, as well as Brazil’s foul-strewn win over Cote d’Ivoire on Sunday, Maradona said officials were letting too much go.
He also said that Fabiano had used his arm during the build up to his second goal in Brazil’s 3-1 win.
“This is football and not kung fu fighting,” he said in reference to Argentina’s 4-1 win over Korea Republic. “So I don’t think yet we’ve seen the fair play we want to see.”
On Fabiano’s goal – which the Brazil striker came via “The Hand of God” – Maradona said he was disappointed to see the referee laughing after awarding the goal, and denied that it could be compared to his infamous hand-ball in 1986.
“No, this one hit his arm. It’s pretty obvious, the ball even hit his arm twice,” said Maradona. “The tragicomic thing is the smile of the referee afterwards, I didn’t see the referee laugh after I scored the goal against England. The referee (in 1986) didn`t smile, he had more doubts than anybody, he looked at the linesman, because at that time there was no fourth official, he looked at the crowd to see if they gave could give him a hand… Yesterday the referee was laughing. If you saw the handball, why didn`t you penalise it? And it was in a very crucial point of the match, with Brazil taking a 2-0 lead.”
Tags: Argentina, Diego Maradona
