Barcelona head coach Xavi Hernández has this evening taken fresh aim at La Liga, on the back of his side’s meeting with Villarreal.
The subject of officiating has of course taken its place front and centre in the headlines in Catalunya once more late on Saturday.
This comes after an overturned penalty call proved decisive, en route to Barca’s latest damaging defeat.
The Blaugrana, for their part, slipped to a 2nd successive loss across all competitions a short time ago.
After recovering from a two-goal deficit to race into a 3-2 lead late in the 2nd-half, Xavi and co. somehow conspired to concede on a further trio of occasions, gifting Villarreal an eventual 5-3 victory.
And yet, with the score locked at 3-3, Barca appeared to have been afforded a golden opportunity to put themselves back in front.
This came after referee Jose Munuera pointed to the spot, owing to a hand ball in the visitors’ penalty area.
Upon reviewing the incident on the pitchside monitor, however, Munuera opted to overturn his original decision, cancelling the spot-kick.
Despite the widespread consensus being that the call made was the correct one, one individual nevertheless furious with the situation comes in the form of the aforementioned Xavi.
Drawn on the penalty incident post-match, Barca’s headmaster made use of the opportunity to reignite his war of words with the Spanish top-flight’s organisers, La Liga.
“La Liga is making things very difficult for us,” he began. “I think we deserved to win today.”
From here, Xavi went as far as to claim that the fourth official in attendance in Catalunya informed him that the incident looked ‘a clear penalty’:
“I might get sanctioned, but the penalty call ruined the match. It was a clear penalty and the fourth official admitted it. I don’t want to say anything else, but the images are there.”
Conor Laird | GSFN
