The president of Barça, Joan Laporta, came forward this Monday after the refereeing controversy that hit the Real Madrid classic played at the Santiago Bernabéu. The Blaugrana president has published an institutional video in which he threatens to request a replay of the match, which ended with a white victory (3-2), if the validity of the ghost goal not awarded to Lamine Yamal is confirmed.
“As a club we want to be sure of what has happened. We will immediately ask the CTA and the Federation to provide us with all the images and audio of the play. If once the documentation has been analyzed the club understands that an error occurred we will take all actions opportune to reverse the situation without ruling out, obviously, the necessary legal actions. If it is confirmed that it was a legal goal, which is what we think, we will go further and ask for a replay of the match as has already happened in a European match. due to a VAR error,” Laporta reported, referring to the Belgian Jupiler Pro League duel between Anderlecht and Genk.
In addition to Lamine Yamal’s goal that did not get on the scoreboard, the match was also marked by other controversial plays that fell on the white side, such as Cubarsí’s penalty on Lucas Vázquez in an action where the Galician does his part to contact with his leg from Catalan. “I want to emphasize that although we will focus on this play (that of Lamine Yamal), we also disagree with various actions that occurred during the match and that, while they could be consulted in the VAR, this tool was ignored by the arbitrator incomprehensibly,” he explains regarding the other controversies.
The reason for the video is “to convey the dissatisfaction caused by the misuse of a tool such as VAR marking the agenda one day after one of the most important matches on the world calendar.” Laporta, who does not define himself as “a great defender of VAR” because “it takes away spontaneity”, asks that the technology be used “always to avoid errors that could lead to unfair decisions.” “Yesterday the VAR was poorly managed,” he added, referring to a tool that in his opinion “continues to cause confusion and contradictory criteria depending on the games and the teams.”
Barça’s top representative praises LaLiga, “successful and followed by millions of followers around the world”, but points out that the poor use of VAR “undervalues ??the competition”. “We understand the difficulty of refereeing work but precisely for this reason there are tools like VAR that have to help have a fairer competition and not the other way around,” he says in this regard.
Laporta finishes his speech by defending that his appearance “is neither gratuitous nor advantageous”, but is a reaction to the “helplessness due to having suffered numerous erroneous actions” by the referees and seeing that other plays have “benefited” the rival, in this case to Real Madrid. “Added both (situations) show the distance in points at the top of the League,” concludes the president of a Barça team that practically said goodbye to the title at the Bernabéu, already eleven points behind the whites with six games remaining.