The day the world witnessed the worst referee performance ever Chelsea vs Barcelona 2009 

Will never forget that Ballack chase after the ref. One of the most iconic moments in UCL history.

We all would have liked seeing Ballack tackles on the referee, while he trying to chase him, after he didn't whistle Eto's clear handball inside the area.

Coming back to this after Barcelona are being accused of bribery of an referee executive in La Liga is hilarious. The refs were 100% paid in this game it was obvious when the ref was being scream touched and shouted at by Ballack and, he wasn’t even carded cause he knew what he had just done was disgusting.

As a Barça fan, a wise man once said: "THIS IS A DISGRACE, A F***IN DISGRACE!"

"A champions league I would be ashamed of winning." José Mourinho

The penalties were dubious other than the handballs. Pique virtually caught the ball and the Eto'o one was a stonewall penalty.

2:00 lol even pique's teammate instinctively puts his hand up for handball

As a barça fan - there were 3 definite penalties that chelsea should have been awarded and the red card shown to abidal was never a sending off! Just a terrible ref all round. Never managed another European game after this debacle.

I am a united fan and that referee has sold his soul that day, I watched the game with a cousin of mine who is a die hard Barcelona fan and he couldn't believe why the referee didn't count all those penalties for Chelsea.

How Ballack didn't fly into a rage and beat up the referee is beyond me. Man can control his emotions, unlike me

I had a friend at high school who supported Chelsea, had perfect behaviour in lessons, then on the next day, we had Spanish first lesson, the teacher made one comment about the match, and moments later he was kicked out of the lesson 😂

As a Chelsea fan this was so painful to watch. One thing I've never taken well in sport is ridiculously bad refereeing. It's one thing to be outplayed and lose fair and square, but this was a disgrace. Quite obvious after all the allegations Barca have faced that this referee was bribed.

As a forest fan watching this i can honestly say Chelsea was robbed massively.

You should watch the first leg as well, Barcelona got robbed by the referee on multiple occasions

I’m a QPR fan and didn’t like Chelsea at all during this period. But even I can see that this was absolutely ridiculous. They should have had at least 2 clear penalty’s.

I was at the game sat behind the Ballack shot. It was going in most likely and Eto'o intentionally raised his arm to block the shot and then the ball hits the upper part of his arm. Handball.

Im a chelsea fan and the only reason i can think of that we were robbed in this game is because uefa didnt want another united vs chelsea final . If we had VAR back then surely one of those would have been a penalty

31´ 81´ 95´ clear penalties! 65´ shouldn´t be red card.. if they didn´t score one penalty it still would be 3:1.. BIGGEST ROBBERY IN FOOTBALL HISTORY

The only penalty is the handball from pique, everything else was diving. Furthermore, ballack should not have played that match as he should have been sent off on the previous game (which was a real robbery but somehow nobody speaks about it and the penalty to Henry). The biggest robbery on football history was the inter Milano Vs Barcelona, clear robbery in order to Barcelona not winning the champions in Bernabéu

And Barca fans have the nerve to say Spanish teams are better. They should look into real Madrid as well. The recent wins are solid but some older ones. Well....

Let me say straight away, I do not like Chelsea. But I remember this game at the the time and there's no doubt the ref cheated Chelsea.

I don't understand why no one talks about the first leg of Barca vs Chelsea. No red card for Ballack,clear penalty for Barcelona denied, Ballack hand ball inside penalty area, Abidal Red card, Drogba foul on pique. Everyone just talks about denied penalties of chelsea.

I remember watching this match on TV. It was unreal. I was grabbing my head and thinking how is it possible for something like that to happen at this level of competition. The footballers themselves would referee better.

And barca fans says : VARDrid 😂 now they know why fifa invented VAR

You can't help but think the ref in that game was bunged a few quid to deny Chelsea, how can the ref not see four blantant penalty calls. I would be surprised if he was allowed to officate a game again after that match.

13th anniversary today, I'm still shocked by the penalties denied on the two handballs but I wouldn't have given the penalties on the other situations, they weren't clear fouls. no explanation on the handballs tho.

Chelsea got their revenge in 2012 it was one of the sweetest moments in football

I think this match was fixed in order to promote Messi as the next big thing and set up a final against Ronaldo. UEFA would much rather have this than another all English final like the year before. The most obvious one was the Pique hand ball. Its about as obvious as it comes and the referee can see it but decides not to give it.

As a barca fan, I can confirm that this match like a wise man once said "ITS A DISGRACE ITS A FOOKIN DISGRACE" and yeah we were probably going to loose 7-1

the last handball is just a disgrace. the ref was there and clearly saw that but didnt give a pen

I am a Gooner and when I watched this my heart went out to my Chelsea Brothers&Sisters of Premier League...this was a travesty to see.....betting HAD to be involved...

I like how the thumbnail implies that BOTH teams got fecked that night... Pre-VAR era.

Reality is that only the Pique handball is a penalty, the rest the Chelsea players went down like a sack of shit, rightly ignored by the ref

The referee wasn't stupid. He knew what were going on. What a shame!

If so many people from both sides complained, why was an enquiry not made as to match fixing??

England v Germany WC 2010 yards over the line, England v Argentina, WC 1986, blatant and obvious hand ball, England v Portugal EC 2004 Sol Campbell goal disallowed for a foul on his own team mate! And many more. South Korea v Italy WC 2002, South Korea v Spain WC 2002.

As an Arsenal fan, l don't have too much time for Chelsea, but that was daylight robbery

The red card for Abidal was about as bad as the missed penalties. He didn’t even touch Anelka and got sent off for nothing. Chelsea should’ve had at the very least two penalties and probably three. If I remember correctly, Drogba had the reputation as a diver, which could’ve affected the referee’s decision to not award him a penalty when he went down.

I don't condone abusing a ref, but this ref was abusing the whole team the whole match.

Dreadful noise accompaniment.

This match and Barcelona 6-1 PSG are the biggest reasons why VAR needs to exist, without it match fixing and robberies by bad referee decisions would be way more prevalent

Lets look at the facts. Chelsea: didn't get 3 penalties. Barcelona: Ballack didn't got send off for slapping iniesta, abidal got sent off for no reason, they didn't get a clear penalty on Henry in the 1st leg, got denied a clear goal scoring chance in 1st leg, didn't get a penalty for ballack handballing the ball inside the box in the second leg.

One year prior to that the final match was MAN U vs Chelsea. MAN U had qualified for the final that year and Chelsea was about to against Barca. The last thing the UEFA wanted is to have the same teams playing finals again. Less money, less viewing rate, etc. It's all about money and the UEFA is corrupted as hell! Therefore, they bribed the referee.

It wasn't poor by the ref, the whole thing was absolutely rigged because top UEFA officials wanted a messi and Ronaldo final, it's obvious

Im a big Chelsea fan and i have also lived in Norway for more than 30 years. This ref is a Norwegian. Even recently he was stubborn saying he did everything right that match and he wouldnt change a single call from that match. He also had another horrible match during that same period. It was between Fiorentina and Bayern Munich. It was so bad that Fiorentina fans were trying to find his hotel room after the match.

A good example of why VAR should be tolerated.

imagine this happened today? half the league would boycott, other half would be in social media comments saying 'cry more chelsea fans'

I believe that was the last match for the referee to judge ever😱what a shocker

As a Chelsea fan i was absolutely devastated. Looking back now i still believe the refereeing was atrocious but now i don't think the "fouls" were worthy of penalties except for the two blatant handballs (the second was in front of the referee). Also, Abidal was not the last man so the red card ought to be a yellow.

Anelka was diving. No penalty for diving.

even the fans, bench player and ppl watching thru tv CLEARLY SEE IT WAS HANDBALL, idk how much Barca pay this ref🤣

3 penalties really. The rest were dives

That handball was just redicolusly obvious...

Abidal red card was a correct call...he brought down the Chelsea forward hence denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity

Vardrid vs Bayern 2017 was worse Barca was robbed in the 1st leg

00:20 Ref knew already what's gonna happend

Well, yea... As a Barca fan, i found this match was very weird... I felt that it was rigged.

No. The world saw a match fixing scandal that still hasn’t been addressed

can you post the first length too?

I usually don‘t like those matches where one side thinks that if you make enough penalty claims the referee will eventually be obligated to concede one - as if several half- or quarter-penalties will somehow sum up to a „full“ penalty. That‘s the way Brazil tried to provoke penalties during WC 2014 (six or seven ridiculous attempts in the Germany game alone). Get the crowd cooking, put pressure on the referee. Having said this, this match here is a different case altogether. Although not everything in this video was penalty-worthy, Chelsea should definitely have gotten two: one for that clear foul inside, not outside the box, and the other one for Piqué‘s handball. Very bad performance by the referee indeed.

Hilarious people think that first one is a foul, let alone a penalty. Absolute dive, there’s no way that contact causes Malouda to go down like that. Slightly touches his side and Malouda throws himself BACKWARDS

I am far from a Chelsea fan, but that Barca side where proven cheats and the less said about the ref the better!

As a Barca fan I’ll admit this refereeing was a joke. However I’ll at least admit that while people saying Barca paid referee while completely ignoring Abidal red card clearly wasn’t even a foul. Not as if Barca got it completely their way either.

This has now been beaten by the Spurs vs Liverpool game

I can think of a few worse referees

How is this still happening with video replay? They can see clearly what the ref supposedly can’t! I don’t get it 😮

barcelona só ganhou a champions em 2011... e já não estava mais no auge, há muito saudosismo nesse barcelona...

People forget that the refereeing in the first leg was awful too. Not excusing this travesty but 180 min of bad reffing changed a lot.

As an Arsenal fan, l don't have a lot of time for Chelsea, but they were well and truly shafted that night. They should spend some of their money taking Barca and all the officials to court. They have all the evidence on video.

This is probably not match fixing. The only penalties that should have been given to Chelsea was the two handball situations, but he did also give a red card to a Barcelona player after the Chelsea player got tripped by his own legs. I think this is just a case of bad refereeing.

saddest game ever, chelsea should have gone through ~ spurs fan

most of these aren't even bad calls, the red card at 65' and handball at 81' are yes. you can see why at 28' it was given as a free kick instead of a penalty, because initial contact was outside the box, still prob as a penalty though. 31' and 78' there is tiny contact, but not nearly enough to make him fall over(it was a dive). 95' is just people being stupid, if the ball hits the part of the arm that is about halfway to the elbow or higher, it is no handball, that is what happened. (ik this is going to get so many negative replies...)

That's why I will never compare Messi to Ronaldo because where ever messi plays he gets help either from his colleagues ref or fifa

At the time i thought Chelsea had been ripped off massively but watching it back now its just a standard poor refereeing performances. 1. Arguably a penalty for the foul on Malouda.hes gone down very softly 2. No penalty for Drogba just not being strong enough 3. Anelka dived 4. Blatent handball. Not deliberate but still handball. 5. Not handball, hits him on the back of his shoulder

1:31 Anelka was diving💔

If you think that refereeing is bad you obviously have'nt been to scotland .

Barcelona and messi have gotten away with alot of robberies...

I call that era Blatterball

actually great performance by the referee.. he did exactly what they paid him for ;) if ya know what I mean

Even with VAR today, referees are getting away with atrocious calls. They have to be penalized, banned etc or it will continue.

31min it's not a penalty... No way.

All I saw was Chelsea players dive on every "penalty" sequence, stay on your feet big fella 🫣

that's how uefalona was borned

I didn’t see any dodgy decisions, Chelsea notorious bottlers

Fifa made "billions" off this match, setting up Barca for the future of Messi

If the referee was paid then why was abidal sent off. Chelsea just cried for pens all game and got outplayed by 10 men for most of the game. I'm saying this as a Man Utd fan, bearing in mind if Chelsea won we woulda beat em easily in the final. Anyone who disputes that knows Man Utd had Chelsea's number at that point. I did want us to play Chelsea but they were crying foul for everything.

As a Barca fan, this is crazy. Chelsea could have had 4 penalties. Abidal being sent off without even committing a foul shows totally incompetent refereeing

That ref was bribed by barca.. no question about it

And this Fanbase Cries over Realmadrid Barca is the biggest joke in the history of Football

lol, it's crazy that Barcelona managed to advance after the ref red carded Abidal for nothing and didn't even send anyone from chelsea off for protesting.

We can also mention referee's performance during Serbia x Switzerland (Albanians pulling and pushing Serbs in the penalty area without consequences) or Germany x Sweden (referee not ending the game 10 minutes after the extra time ended only so Germans can score a goal) during world cup in Russia.

Drogba and Anelka were NOT penalties

If you think this is the worst referee performance ever you should watch about 5 games in the EFL.

To be fair the referee made only a couple mistakes that Chelsea fans can be mad of. All these penalties that he didn't give during the game were DIVES. You can see it clearly here. Foul on Malouda was outside the box, Drogba fell without help, Anelka fell without help. On the other hand the red card for Abidal was a mistake because Anelka hit his own leg (!!!) without any contact with Abidal. So that mistake was in favour of Chelsea.

Everyone is ignoring the obvious mistake that was Abidal red

I'm surprised the referree could hear anything over the deafening music

One thing that gets forgotten in all this fiasco is that there was two great goals

I think this refree gambling for barça to qualifie it is clear

refs paid

those diving things - wasn't a fault | serious honest but the handball from fucking Pique - was deliberately | so Red card and penalty