Vincent Kompany accused referee Tasos Sidiropoulos of making a "laughable" decision when he booked the wrong opposition player in Manchester City's 2-1 defeat to CSKA Moscow.
Premier League champions City finished with nine men after both Fernandinho and Yaya Toure were sent off in a result that means Manuel Pellegrini's men are unlikely to qualify for the last 16 of the Champions League.
Captain Kompany, who feels City are being undermined by poor decisions in Europe, was annoyed that the official did not show CSKA's Pontus Wernbloom a second yellow card for fouling Sergio Aguero.
Instead, in a case of mistaken identity, he cautioned his teammate Sergei Ignashevich, and Kompany told City's official website: "Getting the wrong man for a yellow card... it's laughable.
"We probably made more mistakes than the referee, but eventually we are going to get something and people will be angry we got a decision for us. It can't always be the other way.
"We are extremely unlucky. I am not going to talk about the referee, but at some stage I do hope it will turn to our advantage. I believe a lot in karma. It has to go our way."
Kompany accepted that City's performance had not been good enough, adding: "I think the result says enough. There is no way we can afford to lose points against a team we should beat every day, especially at home.
"But it happened. It won't take a lot for everyone at the club to realise we need to do better."
Pellegrini's team threatened to score an equaliser at the end, leading Kompany to argue that their efforts with nine men had been the one encouraging element of a disappointing night.
He said: "That's the positive. I am completely proud of how we played when we were down to nine men. Everyone who saw those last 20 minutes would realise we gave everything we had. You can't debate that.
"But before that it wasn't good enough. It's another 70 minutes where we should have done better. That's disappointing."