Neil Lennon has accused his Juventus counterpart, Antonio Conte, of "talking rubbish" as the row simmers about goalmouth fouling in the first leg of the Champions League tie three weeks ago.
Celtic submitted a dvd of incidents to Uefa and asked for clarification on why the Spanish referee Alberto Mallenco had not punished Juventus' defenders for shoving, pulling and manhandling the attacking players during the Italians' 3-0 win at Celtic Park.
Conte was asked about Celtic and Lennon's protests at his pre-match press conference in Turin yesterday and claimed to have complaints of his own. "He [Lennon] should come and coach in Italy. His Celtic is doing great things, they play well, but if I'm going to analyse the details of the first leg it is well known that every time Celtic had a corner one of their players was in the goalmouth hindering [goalkeeper] Gianluigi Buffon. Should we also make a complaint to UEFA?"
Those comments were relayed to Lennon at the Celtic press conference a couple of hours later and he vigorously defended the right of his strikers, in particular Gary Hooper, to stand in the goalmouth awaiting crosses. "Hooper is allowed to stand in front of Buffon. He [Conte] is talking rubbish. Any player can stand anywhere he likes in the box. He's not affecting the goalkeeper, he's not touching the goalkeeper and he's not preventing him from getting the ball. If he prevents him from getting the ball then, yes, it's a free kick. But before the ball is kicked he's not doing anything and he is entitled to stand where he likes. So he [Conte] is talking nonsense.
"Gary wasn't doing anything wrong. And what about Scott Brown? [Simone] Padoin came on as a substitute and the first thing he did was put his arms around Scott's waist. He got booked for it and then he did the same thing again straight away. At the first corner of the night, Gary ended up in the back of the net. So how does that happen without him being wrestled in there? We'll just do the same thing as we did in the first leg. But I haven't seen this kind of thing done anywhere else in Europe."
Celtic have had no response from UEFA since submitting the dvd.
Tonight's tie will be refereed by 39-year-old Turkish official Firat Aydinus, who has taken charge of only three previous Champions League fixtures.
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