VIRGIL VAN DIJK, the Celtic centre-half whose ordering off turned the last 32 Europa League tie with Inter Milan, last night branded referee Ivan Kruzliak the worst he has ever experienced.

Van Dijk received two yellow cards in the space of 11 minutes in the first half of the match with Roberto Mancini's side in the San Siro for challenges on Rodrigo Palacio and Mauro Icardi.

The Dutch defender felt that both decisions were wrong and was scathing about the performance of the Slovakian match official after his team had lost 1-0 to crash out of the competition.

The 23-year-old was also highly critical of Argentinian striker Icardi who appealed to the referee to book his opponent after he had gone to ground.

"It was a terrible decision," he said. "That is the worst referee I have ever experienced in my career. I don't know why he made this decision but it was shocking. I watched the whole game and I don't understand all of the decisions he made.

"The second yellow card was just a ball in the air that two players are challenging for. We are shoulder to shoulder and Icardi got up and asked for the referee to book me again. He did that and it was a terrible decision.

"I would never ask for an opponent to be booked but it happens in football. What disappoints me most is that they weren't yellow cards and it happened so early in the game. It was a bad decision and that shouldn't happen.

"I don't even know what the ref said to me. After the first yellow card, I was thinking:'What is going on here?' It was a fair challenge. Hard, yes, but we play man's football and that happens.

"I don't understand that one and I didn't understand the second one either. I knew the red card was coming and I just walked off. You can shout and scream and it doesn't change anything. I was just hoping the team would pull off the impossible task but Inter scored a goal."

Van Dijk felt his side, who had created chances when they had 11 men on the park and who had two strong claims for penalties turned down after Stuart Armstrong and John Guidetti were brought down, could have claimed an historic result.

He said: "I want to apologise to my team-mates and all the fans who travelled to Italy. I let them down and I feel terrible. If I'd stayed on the pitch for 90 minutes, we'd have had a big chance to go through.

"We had a good gameplan and we started well. We learned a lot from the first leg at Celtic Park. We stayed close together as a back four and we talked a lot.

"We had chances and I think we would have had a good chance to go through.What happened was very bad for me and for the team. I felt so bad that I had let my team mates and all the fans down.

"It's so disappointing and I need to learn from this. I am young, I am learning every day and I've made high expectations for myself.

"Sometimes it's hard to meet them because I am young but I will try to learn from this. As a team, we showed we have made progress. We have been good in the league and even with 10 men, we showed our quality. It's just so disappointing that we are out of Europe."