The Barça-Atlético de Madrid game ended with an episode of tension at the door of the Blaugrana locker room. As sources from the Barcelona club explained to this newspaper, referee Sánchez Martínez’s number 1 assistant, Raúl Cabañero Martínez, stood next to the Barcelona booth with the aim of listening to what was said about the refereeing. At that time the footballers and technical staff had not yet arrived. Only auxiliaries were present and some critical shouts had been heard, especially with the fouls pointed out to Xavi’s team in the last half hour. There was also the head of press for the Barcelona technical staff, Edu Polo, who had gone to the place because on this occasion a television camera had been placed there to conduct an interview. Polo went to Cabañero and asked him what he was doing there. The assistant responded that “it’s his job” while calling Sánchez Martínez to force Xavi to identify Edu Polo as press officer. The referee came and said that he only wanted dialogue but then he would also have addressed the press officer with intemperate boxes.
The episode even appears in the referee’s report because Polo was reprimanded for “addressing assistant 1, in a defiant manner, in the following terms: ‘What are you doing here?’”.
At half-time, and always according to the Blaugrana version, the security members had to ask Cabañero to leave the Blaugrana locker room area. Normally they notify the delegate to inform the footballers that they have to return to the field of play but in this case there would have been no notice.
