Kolkata: Delhi Dynamos manager Harm van Veldhoven on Sunday slammed the match referee for turning down a penalty appeal against their skipper and start Italian recruit Alessandro Del Piero.
Del Piero, who was substituted by Brazilian recruit Gustavo Santos towards the fag end of the match, was given a warning by the referee Santosh Kumar in the sixth minute for diving following a challenge by Jofre inside the hosts' circle.
"There was frustration for Del Piero. I think that was really a penalty and we did not get it. After that we had a clean shot from Shylo on the ball," the Dutch-Belgian coach told reporters after their 1-1 draw against ATK in their second ISL fixture here.
He further said that the referee was under pressure and that he had already sounded an alert to his boys but it's nothing they could do about it. Asked whether he was happy with the refereeing, he said: "Not at all. There were strange situations, sometimes you have to live with that. Everybody saw that it was a penalty.
"I've said the pressure was coming on the referee. I told the players that be careful with the penalty against us. The referee sometime was very nervous. That was coming true but you have to react. But you can only talk about it. I hope the next time the referee makes a mistake and we have the penalty.
"We were here to play football but we are bit unlucky. I think we were better with the combination. We are very disappointed that the penalty was against us early into the match," he said.
Having opened their account with one point folowing their goalless draw against FC Pune City, the former Roda JC manager said: "I can't change the result anymore. We missed so many chances against Pune and we were very disappointed. We could have had three points there. Now after coming here we had to stand up and we reacted. You saw the way we played from the back to the inside and take the strikes. We tried very hard and are very happy that we drew the game.
"One point in away match really gives you confidence especially against a team who had six points from two matches," he said.
"Of course, we had to stand up and we did well. Then the beautiful goal from Pavel. At that moment we won the moment more and more."
The Dynamos manager further said he would not like to play on the artificial turf of Vivekananda Yuva Bharati Krirangan anymore. "It's always difficult when you play one or two times. I don't like to tread too many times on this field because you feel it in your muscles and your back. It's not easy but you have to handle it."
"I told my players don't discuss too much about it. May be it's a little bit hard synthetic field but we can't change it. We had to show our performance," Veldhoven said.
The Delhi outfit goalscorer Pavel Elias said the equaliser was one of the most beautiful goals he had scored in his career. "It was the goal for my team. I only shot to the goal and it was good," a fan of Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo added.
