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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Darragh Culhane

RTE pundit Didi Hamann makes claim about referee after Republic of Ireland loss to Portugal

RTE pundit Didi Hamann has slammed referee Matej Jug after Ireland's 2-1 loss to Portugal.

Stephen Kenny's side looked to be on the verge of one of the truly great nights of Irish football after John Egan's first half header.

And Ireland were deserving of their lead after their first half performance but two late goals from Cristiano Ronaldo broke Irish hearts.

And Hamann took to social media and said that he felt something wasn't right last night.

He said: "In 35 years playing or watching football I never had the feeling that something wasn’t right. Yesterday I did for the 1st time. Played 1 minute over added time in 1st half and for no reason well past in the 2nd which cost Ireland a point, on top of a dozen dubious calls"

And Hamann wasn't the only one upset with the referee's performance with Stephen Hunt blasting Jug.

He said: of Ronaldo's altercation with Dara O'Shea in the build up to the first half penalty: : "My biggest disappointment there is he never reviewed it.

"He spent ten minutes reviewing the penalty, which if he spent that long reviewing are you 100 per cent sure it's a penalty? No.

Referee Matej Jug (©INPHO/Ryan Byrne)

"And then, listen I think Dara's gone down a little bit easy, at first you think he punched him but he hit him in the shoulder. It's probably not a sending off, but he didn't review it.

"You could say he's raised his arm and by the letter of the law it's a sending off. We're made of tougher stuff than that and we wouldn't want him to be sent off for that I don't think."

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