Wenger: Fabinho tricked Alexis Sanchez to send him off
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has criticized Alexis Sanchez's attitude towards receiving a second yellow card for a hit on Fabinho.
Arsene Wenger
has blamed Liverpool player
Fabinhofor "cheating" to have
Alexis Sanchezsent off at Inter Milan on Tuesday.
Liverpool were defeated 1-0 at Anfield in the second leg, but went to the quarter-finals on the basis of a 2-1 aggregate win.
Sanchez was sent off at a crucial point in the match, two minutes after Lautaro Martinez had given Inter hope with a goal.
It was Sanchez's first red card in 64
Champions Leaguematches, and Wenger claimed that Fabinho was more than a factor in the referee's judgment.
"It was borderline between cheating and being clever," Wenger, who worked with Sanchez at Arsenal between 2014 and 2018, told beIN SPORTS.
"He was cheating, he made more of it. Maybe he had pain, he was touched by Sanchez. You cannot say it was completely fake. Maybe he could have got up quicker.
"It's one of those fouls – when it's one of your plays you say it's clever; when you're completely neutral like we're supposed to be you can say he could have made less of it.
"He didn't want to hurt him, he played the ball first."
Sanchez is the first Inter player to be sent off in the Champions League knockout rounds since Cristian Chivu versus Schalke in April 2011.
Martinez's assist came after the 33-year-old had been penalized for lunging at Thiago Alcantara earlier in the game.
And Liverpool manager
Jurgen Klopp
thought Sanchez deserved a straight red card only for one tackle late in the first half.
"I think he was lucky he hadn't got a red card in the first half, going in so high on Thiago onto his knee," Klopp said at his post-match news conference.
"Passion is good, absolutely good, but if it leads to these kinds of things then it doesn't help."
On the red card incident, Klopp added:
"If you can win the ball only [then it is acceptable] but if you endanger an opponent when you do it, then you don't win the ball.
"If Fabinho goes in with the same intention, with the leg out, then both players get injured."
Inter have now been knocked out from each of their previous three Champions League knockout matches since defeating Bayern Munich in the 2010-11 last 16.
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