Thierry Henry: "The Refereeing Was Horrendous"

Well, it happened in Champions League too. After getting used to refereeing contesters in several domestic championships, we had to see it in the greatest club competition in the world, too.

No sooner than yesterday night, Arsenal complained about Terje Hauge refereeing. Unable to accept their defeat against Barcelona, even though they had plenty of chances to end the game before Eto'o scored the equalizer, two of the main "gunners" found their excuse in bad refereeing.

I don't know, maybe it's just a coincidence, but the fact is that none of them is actually English. And when I say that, I'm referring to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the well-known British fair-play might have stopped Thierry Henry and Arsene Wenger from doing that.

No wonder they were both arguing about something during the final ceremony. Now we know why they were so into it. Henry started first: "They [Barcelona] are not used to the pace of the Premiership and the ref -- if he didn't want us to win it just say so right from the start. Sometimes some calls in the game were a bit strange," ranted Henry of the Norwegian whistle-blower. "Some of the referee's decisions today were horrendous. Next time I should learn how to dive maybe but I'm not a woman so I stay on my feet".

Arsene Wenger continued on the same note: "The hardest thing for me to accept is that their first goal was offside - when you go down to ten men, this is hard to accept," said Wenger. "When you consider the replacement of the original linesman and the goal being offside, it is very hard to take this seriously". He admitted, though, that his team failed to close the game after Campbell's header.

"I feel we are an unlucky loser but a very good team has grown in the last two or three months", concluded Wenger at the end of the press conference. Whether Arsenal will be able to repeat the performance next year, we'll just have to wait and see.