The Irish bookmaker Paddy Power has remarkablely responded to the elimination of Chelsea in the semi-finals of the Champions League by returning the stake to the punter. Instead of the business collecting many thousands of pounds that gamblers had put on a victory for the Londoners, the business decided to return all stakes.

According to Paddy Power the manner in which the Blues were knocked-out of the tournament by Barcelona was a scandal, so the bookie said it would not let its customers pay for this loss. "The referee's performance was awful, and we will not let our customers suffer because of this nonsense," read the statement from Paddy Power.

Anybody who placed a bet on a victory for Chelsea or the club reaching the final, will be reimbursed. For a long time it seemed Guus Hiddink's team would reach a second final in two years, but well into injury time Andrea Iniesta's shot disrupted the English party. Chelsea claimed that the outcome of the game had been affected several times by the Norwegian referee Tom Henning Ovrebo, who turned down four decent penalty appeals.

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