Things are never easy at Newcastle United, and our upcoming Champions League game against Jose Mourinho’s Benfica will be another big test after Saturday’s disappointing defeat at Brighton.
Although a win would put us on six points, and consign the Portuguese giants to their third straight defeat in this season’s competition, a Jose Mourinho side can never be taken lightly.
So if Tuesday night’s tie couldn’t get any more high-stakes and must-win, UEFA has decided to throw in a small curveball that will have plenty of our fans seething…
UEFA has confirmed the match officials for this week’s Champions League fixtures, and ‘the best referee in the world’ has been assigned to our game at St James’ Park.
Szymon Marciniak, who received immense praise for his refereeing display in the 2022 World Cup final, is near-universally regarded as the best in the business. Well, unless you ask our fans.
The Pole was, of course, the referee who awarded PSG a controversial stoppage time penalty against us at the Parc Des Princes, which ultimately cost us a place in European football for the rest of the 2023/24 campaign.
Joining Marciniak will be Tomasz Kwiatkowski, who was in charge of the VAR which prompted the penalty overturn on that night in Paris. Two years on from that costly error, he will take on the same role on tonight.
So far this season, our best performances have been when we’ve been less-fancied in a big game and playing under the lights.
Liverpool and Barcelona stand out in particular: even if the results weren’t what we wanted, few can deny we were the better team on both occasions and deserved far more than what we got out of both games.
We’ll head into Tuesday’s game against Benfica as the favourites for all three points, but Mourinho’s influence, the heartbreak of playing Benfica back in 2013 and now the choice of refereeing officials should be open invitations for us to knuckle down and put things right.
Hopefully no VAR howlers get in our way tonight, two years on from that robbery in Paris…