{"id":2031,"date":"2014-02-20T06:41:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T06:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=2031"},"modified":"2014-02-20T06:47:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-20T06:47:43","slug":"city-captain-says-barcelona-are-not-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/city-captain-says-barcelona-are-not-better\/","title":{"rendered":"City Captain Says Barcelona Are Not Better"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"widget9\" data-fn=\"polls\" data-question-id=\"88096\" data-widget-created=\"true\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li data-role=\"poll-item\" data-vote-id=\"49811\">\n<p itemprop=\"description\">Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany has backed up his boss Manuel Pellegrini&#8217;s claims that Swedish referee Jonas Erikson contributed to the Blues&#8217; defeat to Barcelona.<\/p>\n<p>Pellegrini blasted Eriksson after City&#8217;s 2-0 Champions League last-16 first-leg home defeat to Barca on Tuesday evening, and although Kompany admits that the Catalan giants played well, he feels Eriksson did not allow the game to flow.<\/p>\n<p>A Lionel Messi penalty, which also saw Martin Demichelis sent off, and a late strike from Dani Alves put the Spanish giants firmly in the driving seat.<\/p>\n<p>However, Kompany does not believe City were out-classed and when asked if Barca were the best side they had faced this season, the Belgium defender said: &#8220;Not at all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Incredibly efficient, though &#8211; they have great individual quality.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was a lot of soft fouls. In the Premier League they would have not been given.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By no means did we think they were superior. When it was 11 v 11, maybe we showed a bit more respect.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was a lot of soft fouls. In the Premier League, they would have not been given.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the tempo was in this game, it would have been to our advantage.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If the second leg is the same, and we manage to stay away from some fouls, we have a chance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pellegrini said Eriksson was &#8220;on Barcelona&#8217;s side from beginning to end&#8221; and was trying to make up for a previous mistake against the Catalan side, and also questioned UEFA&#8217;s decision to appoint an official from Sweden for the tie.<\/p>\n<p>UEFA is likely to take a dim view of such comments &#8211; in 2011, it banned Jose Mourinho for five matches, reduced on appeal to three, for a similar rant when he was at Real Madrid.<\/p>\n<p>City travel to the Nou Camp to face Barca in the second leg on Wednesday, March 1.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div data-fn=\"polls\" data-question-id=\"88096\" data-widget-created=\"true\"><\/div>\n<div data-role=\"poll-value\"><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany has backed up his boss Manuel Pellegrini&#8217;s claims that Swedish referee Jonas Erikson contributed to the Blues&#8217; defeat to Barcelona. Pellegrini blasted Eriksson after City&#8217;s 2-0 Champions League last-16 first-leg home defeat to Barca on Tuesday evening, and although Kompany admits that the Catalan giants played well, he feels [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2032,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031\/revisions\/2032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}