Socceroos legend Harry Kewell accused referees of “cheating” in a dramatic incident during his Yokohama F. Marinos team’s 2-1 defeat to Nagoya Grampus.

Defender Katsuya Nagato opened the scoring for Kewell’s Japanese side in the 54th minute, only for Nagoya to claim a controversial leveller.

In the 76th minute, Kewell was lining up a substitution when Kota Watanabe went down with injury, forcing the Australian to prepare a second player from his bench.

The opposition made a double change, but Kewell’s side bizarrely weren’t allowed to bring on their replacements before play restarted – leaving them a man down.

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Nagoya immediately took advantage as Tsukasa Morishima raced onto a long ball over the top of the defence and scored a brilliant first-time chip.

Kewell screamed at the fourth official: “You’re a cheat, you’re cheating. Hey, hey, hey!”

“That is disgraceful,” Kewell raged at the referee after the goal. “That is a disgrace, that is a disgrace.”

Somehow Kewell avoided a card from the referee for his outburst.

But only after the goal was scored was Yokohama able to make their substitutions.

If Kewell’s frustration wasn’t bad enough, Nagoya’s own substitute Ryosuke Yamanaka then scored a stoppage-time free kick to claim a late victory.

Former Socceroos goalkeeper Mitch Langerak was between the sticks for Nagoya, who claimed their second win of the new season to move to 12th in the J1 League, one place behind Kewell’s Yokohama.

Yokohama have two wins and two losses from their first four games and are already seven points off the title pace, though they have progressed to the Asian Champions League semi-finals for the first time in club history.

Kewell only took over the former Ange Postecoglou team four months ago after another Australian Kevin Muscat quit the club for Chinese Super League side Shanghai Port.

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But he was frustrated as ‘human error’ cost his side a chance at victory.

“From my team, like I said, we did exactly what we needed to do, we played the way we needed to play,” Kewell said post-match.

“Unfortunately, look in life, you control what you can control and we can only control up to about 80 per cent.

“Other stuff you can’t control is the weather and also human error, unfortunately we suffered today from human error but that’s not going to stop us, that’s not going to define us.

“We’re going to keep working hard and we’re gonna look forward to the game on Wednesday night.”