Barcelona manager Hansi Flick has continued to show confusion as to why VAR did not intervene to call a possible penalty against Marc Pubill during their Champions League quarter-final against Atletico Madrid. He also dismissed the comments of Real Madrid manager Alvaro Arbeloa regarding the officiating in Spain.
The Catalan club have filed a complaint to UEFA about the refereeing in their European clash, failing to understand Kovacs decision, and subsequently the lack of VAR review.
“I don’t know what the outcome will be, but for me and the team it’s good that the club is supporting us in this because it was unfair. You can make a mistake once but not twice, and the club’s support is a great help.”
‘We didn’t play well, but that decided the match’
More generally on the introduction of VAR, Flick was positive, but called it’s lack of intervention ‘decisive’ against Atletico Madrid.
“Of course, that’s what I think, that VAR came to help. If the VAR team saw something that wasn’t right and they had to call him and tell him to review that play, and that’s what I missed in that match. I think there are many things we can do better. It’s true that we didn’t play our best game, we made some mistakes, but that wasn’t good and at that point, that decided the match.”
Hansi Flick on Alvaro Arbeloa comments
On Thursday, Real Madrid manager Alvaro Arbeloa continued to cite the Negreira case while talking about the refereeing in Spain, insinuating that there is a bias against Los Blancos. Previously, he has called the Negreira case the biggest scandal in the history of football.
“Nothing, nothing. I don’t waste my energy. It’s his opinion, it’s OK. I focus on my team, nothing else,” Flick responded.
“I don’t care about these things. It’s this business, there’s a lot of noise between us, but that’s what I tell the team, we have to focus on ourselves and not on what Real Madrid does, we are in a good position and we have to win every game and only think about ourselves.”
Barcelona face Espanyol at 18:30 CEST on Saturday in the Catalan derby at Camp Nou. The Blaugrana currently lead Los Blancos by seven points, with Real Madrid facing Girona on Friday night.
I hope Barca will qualify. Visca barca
Well Negreira scandal is the biggest scandal in football world.
No thinner can remove that stain from Barça.
Therefore, Flick should keep his mouth shut. His words rhytme badly with his club bribing officials.
And how many world pundits have you seen talking about it since they saw that it’s nothing but a propaganda orchestrated by Madrid to force referees’ hands to favour them in all matches.
In your dream, it’s a stain on Barça but in reality it’s just another quickly forgotten Madrid antic.
All failed Madrid coaches have tried to use it as excuse for their failures but not enough to prevent them from being sacked
How is it propaganda when there are receipts published of literally millions landed to his account?
Barcelona pays Indians cheap money to spam comments on football pages, obviously.
Bit laughable to see these types of comments really.
Flick why are you even talking about VAR when your club ruined the beautiful game with paying off officials?