For the second time this week, Newcastle United defender Lewis Hall has been snubbed by decision-makers at UEFA.
Indeed, Hall was absolutely brilliant for Newcastle United during their draw with Barcelona in the Champions League on Tuesday night.
The 21-year-old marked Lamine Yamal out of the game from open play, with the Spanish international’s only moment of note being the penalty he scored in the final kick of the game.
Name a better left-back in Newcastle United’s history than Lewis Hall 👇
I'll wait…
Still, Hall wasn’t named the Player of the Match by UEFA’s Technical Observer Group after Newcastle’s draw with Barca – with that honour instead falling to Harvey Barnes.
It’s not that Barnes didn’t play well, just that Hall was surely the standout.
On Thursday, the Technical Observer Group revealed their Team of the Week on UEFA’s official website, and Hall was not a part of it.
Ismail Jakobs named over Lewis Hall in UEFA’s Champions League Team of the Week
The fact that Hall just pocketed one of the world’s best players in the shape of Yamal appears to have been lost on the Technical Observer Group, which is made up by the likes of Sir Gareth Southgate, Roberto Martinez, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Roy Hodgson.
Rafa Benitez was also part of the group – which monitors UEFA’s club competitions in depth – but it is unclear whether he is still involved now that he manages Greek club Panathinaikos.
Let’s hear it then 👇
Either way, the group named Galatasaray’s Ismail Jakobs as the left back in their team – which included no Newcastle player – instead of Hall.
Jakobs played as the Turkish giants beat Liverpool 1-0 in Istanbul on Tuesday and while the point of this article is not to suggest that the Senegal international did not play well, the challenge he faced against a poor Liverpool team was perhaps not as daunting as the one Hall came up against…
Hall has been overlooked once again here.
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