Former Chelsea star Joe Cole claims Messi’s missed penalty kick vs PSG should have been retaken

- Lionel Messi failed to convert his penalty kick in Barcelona’s tie against PSG in Champions League

- Although the Argentine star grabbed his side’s goal of the encounter as they crash out

- Joe Cole has stated that Messi’s missed spot kick should have been retaken due to Veratti’s move

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Former Chelsea star Joe Cole has slammed officials who handled the PSG vs Barcelona Champions League cracker on Wednesday night, March 10.

The former star who is now a pundit stated that Lionel Messi’s missed penalty kick should have been retaken because Marco Veratti encroached the box.

The Argentine had a chance to put his side 2-1 ahead just before half-time of the encounter and had he scored, it would have been a different ball game- but he missed.

His penalty kick was saved by goalkeeper Keylor Navas who aided the ball to hit the crossbar and then it looped back into the middle of the penalty area where Verratti headed it into the corner.

VAR stepped in and after several replays, the English officials Stuart Attwell and Paul Tierney told centre-referee Anthony Taylor there was no problem despite Varatti clearly well in the box before Messi took the kick.

BT Sport pundits Joe Cole and Owen Hargreaves picked up on the blunder.

Ex-Chelsea man Cole said as cited in SunSport:

"He's nearly on Messi's back! He's so far inside.

"I just can't understand how you can make such a poor decision - it's a massive moment."

For PSG, it was perfect revenge against the Catalan giants, nearly four years after they were dramatically knocked out 6-5 on aggregate.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that Ronald Koeman has insisted that Lionel Messi's future is still with Barcelona despite crashing out of the Champions League, Mirror.

Paris Saint-Germain got the better of the Spanish club with a 5-2 aggregate scoreline at the last 16 stages of the competition.

And Koeman believes it is not the end of the road for Messi's career at the Camp Nou as the club are still in contention for La Liga and Copa del Rey trophies this season.

Babajide is a digital publishing expert, an avid sports content thinker, researcher and writer. He is a graduate of Guidance and Counselling, having bagged his B.SC (ED) from the Ekiti State University. He can be reached on Twitter @JideOrevba