Xavi Hernández was very upset with the arbitration suffered at the Coliseum Alfonso Pérez. The FC Barcelona coach was sent off by Soto Grado in the 70th minute for protesting, a decision he did not understand: “I told him that they were allowing a lot of fouls and we weren’t, and that’s why they sent me off,” he said resigned after the match. “The other day in the meeting with the referees they told us that they were going to understand the coaches more, that they were going to be more understanding because we are under tension, and that is not what happened today.” “The referee got out of hand. They are allowing too much,” he snapped.
“We knew we were going to have few chances and they were very comfortable with the 0-0 scoreline, wasting time… it’s their football, it’s their way of competing,” he explained before adding a resigned: “If the referee allows it, there’s no other way ”. “If we sell the product of the League and what we have is this, I think it is not beneficial for anyone,” he added.
Despite everything, Xavi wanted to minimize the importance of his expulsion and focus on sports: “My expulsion is not important, what is important is what has happened on the field. We have tried in every way against a very rocky opponent and it is a point that is insufficient for us, but last year we started the same and finished very well”.
Asked about the expulsion of Raphinha, who gave Gastón an elbow that cost him a red card in the first half, Xavi acknowledged that it was “a host of things” and that the referees “allow too much”. “You don’t have to think about it anymore,” he said.
Nor did he coincide with the referee in the hand indicated to Gavi in ??added time, when a possible penalty in favor of FC Barcelona was being reviewed: “I don’t see a hand anywhere. And it is another of the things that they told us in the meeting the other day, that if they were not clear hands, they were not going to whistle it”. Later, at a press conference, he would be more forceful: “he invents his hand”, he would affirm. “I didn’t like the referees’ meeting the other day anymore. I didn’t like it today either, I don’t know what happened, ”he said.
Finally, he also showed his dissatisfaction with the excessive additions of time. They gave themselves ten more minutes in the first half and nine in the second, which ended up being more due to the VAR review and the constant loss of time: “This is another shame. Effective time and this is over. We are making a fool of ourselves, ”he sentenced.
