Barnsley head coach Conor Hourihane said Dominik Szoboszlai was “disrespectful” to his team after the Liverpool midfielder made a bizarre and unusual error that resulted in a goal for the League One side.
Towards half-time of the game, which Liverpool won 4-1 and booked their place in the fourth round of the FA Cup, Szoboszlai chased down to stop Barnsley’s attack and, under pressure, attempted a flick from just three yards out.
As a result, Adam Phillips, a former member of Liverpool’s youth team, allowed a goal against his former club, and Barnsley scored a goal to bring the score back to 2-1.
“To be honest, I’m a little disappointed with their players,” Hourihane said in the post-match press conference. “I thought it was a little rude.
“I don’t think he would do that against Chelsea or Arsenal in a Champions League game. There’s obviously an incredible amount of emotion and buzz about Adam, but to be honest there’s a bit of a lack of respect from the other players.”
Asked what he thought about Szoboszlai’s decision, Liverpool manager Arne Slott responded to Hourihane’s comments: “I don’t think you should do that in a Premier League match, in a League Cup match, in a friendly or in a training session.”
“It’s a strange choice and I have an opinion on it too, but I prefer to keep it to myself and talk about it with Dom.”
After the game, Szoboszlai confirmed to TNT Sports that he apologized to his teammates for the mistake. “I’m sorry again to the team. I can say that I made a simple mistake and made the team suffer.
Adam Phillips pulled one back for Barnsley after a mistake by Dominik Szoboszlai
“But football moves on and we move on to the next round.”
Slott later said in a press conference, “It’s not the first time we’ve been up 2-0 and there was nothing wrong with the game and we conceded a sloppy or easy goal. This definitely stands out for us as well.”
“Normally when you’re leading 2-0, the other team is trying to accept the loss, but usually if you can keep going and have a lot of possession, the team is probably not as aggressive, but then you can score the third and fourth goal.
“But if you give away an easy goal, as we have done many times this season, it makes a huge difference in mindset for the other team.
“It definitely doesn’t help us. Even tonight, we saw that a lot of things were the same as we’ve seen many times this season.
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Liverpool head coach Arne Slott was unimpressed by Dominik Szoboszlai’s backheel mistake that led to Barnsley’s goal in the FA Cup third round.
“It’s not the only frustration I’m feeling, but we definitely make it difficult for ourselves in moments like this. It’s not just us, we had 60,000 fans supporting us tonight as well.
“Me and the players would have preferred that we didn’t give it 2-1 until the 83rd minute before it was 3-1. That’s what happened and that’s something I would like to see differently.”
Should Barnsley also have been given a penalty?
Barnsley’s hefty penalty claim at Anfield denied
Szoboszlai gave away another penalty in the second half, and when it looked like it was going to be 2-2, he got a big penalty shout.
Reyes Cleary, the Barnsley winger who had been active on the left all night, ran past the Liverpool midfielder and fell under the Hungarian’s tackle.
Replays showed that Szoboszlai touched the ball, but also had a hand on the Barnsley winger’s back. Referee Farai Haram dismissed the claim without using VAR until the fifth round.
“I thought it was a Stonewall penalty at the time,” Hourihane said. “Looking back now, after the game, the players were touching the ball a little bit.
“But at the same time, you could see that he (Szoboszlai) was panicking and Reyes could see that he was tugging on his shirt a little bit.
“It was a decision that could have easily gone our way. It was a big moment of the game, around the 65th minute when we were up 2-1. You never know what’s going to happen after that. It was a big decision that didn’t go our way.”
Following the incident, Slott felt it was not a penalty – especially after two big shout-outs from spot-kicks against Arsenal on Thursday night didn’t go Liverpool’s way.
“There’s no VAR, so if he made a mistake, there was no possibility to correct it,” Slott said. “From what I hear, it wasn’t a penalty, Dominic played the ball, but I’ll have to see it again to give my opinion.
“On Thursday night, just looking at it and not watching it on video, there were two things in the Arsenal box that were more like penalties than this one.
“I can live with not scoring a goal against Arsenal, but this season we conceded penalties even after VAR intervention, which was less than the two that happened at Arsenal. I can accept Arsenal and today’s result.”
