http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/pierluigi-collina-everton-kitbag-twet-12599691
One of the replies:
KommentMonster
the problem with collina's "mistake" wasn't that it was simply bad referring. if it was just that, then we would have forgotten it by now. the concern is that his being chosen to referee that match, along with villarreal being "randomly" drawn as everton's opponents, has the smell of corruption all over it. uefa & co made a huge stink about england having 5 teams in the CL and it seems as though "fate" conspired to keep england to just 4 spots. not to forget, their lot hadn't qualified because as per the rules the winners do not qualify, so they whined until the rules were changed. and so their whining to get the rules changed for their special snowflake selves set the shady ball of football governance rolling. so once again, everton, thanks to their lot, kept out of europe by a conspiracy against english teams. i don't think it's bitter to remember what happened that year. If anything, we should be having those "unlucky" circumstances investigated for any evidence of conspiracy/corruption then suing for loss of earnings!
Mr. Conspiracy theory might do well to remember them being in the qualifier had nothing to do with UEFA allowing us into the competition. Evertons 4th place meant they would have been in the qualifier to begin with.
Liverpool were put into the earlier rounds. In fact our first CL match was in July. We played two rounds before Everton even started.
Once we got through the qualifying process, we had no Country protection as is the norm for group stage play. So we ended up with Chelsea in our group. And still managed to get out of the group.
Everton not winning the tie was due to losing at home 2-1 to Villarreal without Collina as a Ref. They then lost 2-1 away for a 4-2 aggregate scoreline.
Drunken Duncans goal even if allowed didn't stop Everton's defense from conceding goals. They would have lost 4-3.
As for the match stats of the Collina match..Everton 1 goal, 1 shot on target, 0 shots off target.
