RANGERS captain James Tavernier tonight revealed that Italian referee Marco Guida sent off Ibrox winger Jefte in the Champions League qualifying defeat to Dynamo Kyiv because he thought he had elbowed his opponent in the face.
Tavernier was astonished when the match official showed the Brazilian a second yellow card in the second half of the third qualifying round double header at Hampden when the score was 0-0.
He felt the summer signing didn’t even deserve to have a foul awarded against him following an innocuous coming together with Oleksandr Karavaiev just outside the visitors’ penalty area.
Television replays showed that Jefte had not elbowed the forward - but referees are not allowed to use VAR to overturn yellow cards.
“I spoke to him [the referee] as it happened,” said Tavernier. “He explained that it was an elbow in the face. Looking back at it during game time, he gets up really early. I thought it wasn't even a free kick. I thought he got up early. There's no malice to what he’s done.
“It's a 50-50 ball that's going up in the air. Jefte gets up really early. He beats him in the air. I don't know how much contact there is. Obviously that makes a big difference.
“It's obviously disappointing to not get the chance to go to the next round and try to play a third game to go into the Champions League. We're obviously still in Europe, the Europa League, but during the game the decision changes the whole dynamics of the game.
“Even with 10 men, we'll still try to push as much as we can and limit them as much as we can. As the game is getting on, we're pushing more and leaving opportunities for them.
“We had great opportunities but we weren't as clinical as we wanted to be. We kept on asking the question. It's obviously a tough moment trying to go against 11 men. We tried to give it to 11 men, we tried to leave everything out on the pitch. It's just disappointing for all the lads that we couldn't make it happen.”
He added: “We'll obviously look back at this and we have to brush it off quickly. We've got another game on the weekend. There’s no time to mourn on this. We'll look at the lessons that we can take from it. Then we'll brush ourselves off and we've got to go again.
“We all wanted to send the fans home happy tonight and get into the next round. It's small details in games that obviously make a massive impact. We need to look back on it. How we played. Be critical of ourselves.”
