Barcelona fans have been up in arms over what they feel is preferential treatment for Real Madrid, as their affiliate sides compete in the Primera RFEF play-offs.
Last week Barcelona Atletic lost out to Real Madrid Castilla in the play-off semi-final 5-4 on aggregate, following a last-minute Sergio Arribas penalty.
In the second leg, Barcelona were without Arnau Tenas, Atletic captain, due to international duty. The Blaugrana requested that he be released from international duty for the game, but that was denied.
MD claim that there is a clear bias towards Real Madrid with the fact that Iker Bravo, Mario Martin and Rafael Obrador have been ‘freed’ from international duty, despite often being in the squads.
Edgar Pujol, Cesar Palacios, Manuel Angel Moran, Gonzalo Garcia and David Jimenez have all been called up to the under-19 side from Real Madrid. Three of those called up were on the bench for Castilla, as were Bravo and Obrador, while Martin began the match.
The RFEF released a clarifying note in the aftermath, claiming they had contacted the media sources that had published this in order to get them to rectify their statements. Having not done so, the RFEF released a statement saying that none of those Real Madrid players had been ‘freed’ from the call-up, but that they simply were not selected by manager Santi Denia.
While Martin seems a strange omission from the side, there is no way of knowing whether they were left out for any other reasons than Denia’s choice.
Is this yet another catalanimaI favoritism fantasy in style of Franco allegations, which retrospectively turned out that Franco not only supported Atletico but also 1. saved brokELona from bankruptcy THRICE (and was in return decorated three times for it, one gold medal each) and 2. helped them build camp Francisco Nou?