Furious and indignant. Roger Grimau, coach of Barça, has rarely been seen like this. A calm and thoughtful man, yesterday’s game ended hotly and he couldn’t contain himself in the press conference afterwards. The coach pointed directly at the referees. He declared Real Madrid the winner, but also accused the referees of having applied a different criterion when pointing out the fouls. He also reported that, after pointing out a technique to Willy Hernángomez, a referee told him: “This is not the NBA, boy.”
Still at the foot of the pitch, the Barça manager summarized the match in this way: “A good first half, very complete. In the second, they have punished us excessively… [pauses] certain moments”. At the time, he bit his tongue, but when he got to the press conference he exploded. “In three minutes they expel you a great player”, began the argument. “Sure they were fouls, and if you stop it frame by frame and touch here or there… but you can’t blow up a player in three minutes. And surely you must watch the video and, let’s see, yes, here he plays and that, but the criterion cannot be this. There are players who play 34 minutes for the other team and commit three fouls”, he criticized. And he exemplified it with a white player whose name he didn’t say: “He’s a player I love and he’s been forcing all game. I do not know. things That they whistled a technical at en, and having to hear ‘This is not the NBA, boy’… For sure we didn’t lose because of the referees, but I don’t know”, he lamented.
Grimau wanted to make it clear that there were no excuses and that Real Madrid deserved the win. “I’m not excusing myself or my team, it was a fair winner and they won and that’s it, this is the result. Maybe today is the last straw. I don’t know if you can see it from the outside. From the inside, when you’re focused on something, you might see more. There were times when we could get in and we couldn’t,” he summarized.
He also wanted to distance himself from his tone of criticism of the role of the white team. “They have caught us and they have caught us at the level they have allowed them to. Hats off to them. I’m not messing with the club, Madrid, or the players. highest respect We will have to learn or play differently, starting with my position, but at certain times we have not been able to play against this hardness”, he said frustrated.
Despite the enormous pressure, the coach wanted to see something positive in what happened in Málaga for the future of the team. “Now we are screwed because we wanted to win, we are Barça and we want to win everything, but hopefully this unites us even more than we are and we grow to be able to do it in the future”, he wished.
Álex Abrines added to the coach’s speech, who, although he made it clear that he did not think they had lost because of the referees, “it is true that there are a couple of actions, when we were coming back. Many times the criterion is not the same”, he explained.
With similar eloquence, albeit through a different prism, Tomas Satoransky gave voice to the feeling of frustration in the locker room better than anyone else. “The usual”, he let go. “One bad minute and we have loaded the match. We played badly in one minute and lost. I don’t feel like talking, I want to be alone,” he said before taking refuge to mourn the defeat in solitude. The Blaugrana baseman was referring to the 9-2 run that Barça scored at the beginning of the last quarter. Three consecutive three-pointers from Madrid disoriented the team, which was not able to counteract the defensive aggression of the Whites on Satoransky and Laprovittola. The attack also got stuck and the free kicks didn’t go in. Meanwhile, Madrid punished with quick transitions.
The image of the Barça bench was one of absolute desolation at the conclusion of the final. So close to victory and so far at the same time. The Barça game had been the most complete until the beginning of the last quarter. Many illusions were twisted there. Dreams were thwarted. Roger Grimau’s Barça came face to face with reality. The Copa del Rey de Málaga did not grant the happy ending that was expected.
