Expresso Platform: Big Games | FC Porto will miss the basketball match with Ovarense due to a row with the appointment of the referee

Porto club announced in a statement that it would not attend the basketball match with Ovarines, from the Portuguese League, due to the dispute over the appointment of one of the referees, in line with its decision taken in June.

The club justifies the absence by the fact that it was nominated for the match with Ovarense “one of the referees involved in the shameful referees who made up the team last season and deprived him of the national title”.

In the statement, FC Porto also apologizes to Ovarense, who deserves his “great respect and is alien to the nomination”, and informs that, in line with his decision of June 21, 2021, he did not attend the match indicated, which was scheduled to start at 17:00.

“This decision, not new, deserves to be conveyed in defense of the interests of FC Porto,” the note says, adding that he will continue with the basketball team in all competitions, “as long as they allow him to participate.”

Porto’s position comes after the twenty-first of June, after it was keen to miss the Portuguese Basketball League matches that were directed by the same referees in the last match of the 2020/21 final.

“Given the seriousness of the refereeing errors committed at the expense of FC Porto in the fifth match of this final, and given the impact of these errors in assigning the title of national champion, the trend is [do FC Porto] He decided that next season FC Porto will not appear in any match in which the referees involved in these decisions are appointed, without prejudice, if this happens, to the suspension of participation in the Portuguese Basketball League”, he said at the time, in a communiqué.

In the same document, the club’s management said that “this decision was taken into account the tradition of sport in the club and its supporters and the behavior of the entire team and the technical team in defending the interests of the Porto club.”

At the end of the fifth and final match of the championship final hem, which Sporting won 86-85, Porto officials strongly criticized the refereeing and admitted to leaving the sport.