Brendan Rodgers fumes at Celtic Daizen Maeda red card and claims officials are turning football into a COMPUTER GAME

Brendan Rodgers claims officials are now treating football like a COMPUTER GAME with the use of VAR after the Celtic boss was left raging at Daizen Maeda’s red card in their Champions League six-goal hammering by Atletico Madrid.

The Japan star was sent off midway through the first half in the Metropolitano Stadium after Slovakian referee Ivan Kruzliak was referred to the monitor, having initially shown a yellow card. Rodgers was fuming at the reaction of the home technical area as Diego Simeone and his bench appeared to try to influence the whistler.

And Rodgers believes seeing a freeze-frame of Maeda’s studs on Mario Hermoso made it worse. The Irishman said: “I’m really disappointed with the sending off. When you see the images the referee looked at it wasn’t representative of the actual challenge. Both players clashed feet, kicked each other, so for us to lose a man for that was going to be really difficult.

Asked if the reaction of the home bench influenced the referee, he said: “There’s no doubt. I’ve never been one to go on about officials. You have to accept decisions but it feels more like a computer game. The constant looking at screens. And when the referee comes over to see the incident it’s not a reflection of the actual challenge - it’s a still with his foot up which straight away plants a seed for the referee and from there he sends him off.”

Rodgers reckoned his men made a bright start up until that sending off, despite conceding to Antoine Griezmann’s sixth minute opener - with the Frenchman adding another in the second half on a night when he was the star of the show. Celtic aren’t officially out of the Champions League but with just one point and only two games to go, Rodgers knows they have learned