Monza coach Raffaele Palladino slammed Roma counterpart Jose Mourinho after last night's 1-1 draw.

Mourinho branded ref Daniele Chiffi the "worst referee of my career" after he sent off Zeki Celik late on.

But afterwards, Palladino was having nothing of it, declaring: "Monza put in a performance of depth, level, substance and character. Roma made us play badly technically and made us play dirty because they break all the lines passing and is good at exploiting the mistakes of the opponents.

"We were good at adapting to the type of game and we did well in the second half. The match was then split but we tried until the end to find the final spark but that's okay."

"Refereeing? Chiffi was one of the best referees and he didn't do anything wrong, obviously as far as I'm concerned. I've never seen an opposing bench protest like that, what a scandalous thing they did today. Chiffi was perfect and refereed very well."