Barcelona president Joan Laporta has criticised Real Madrid following their controversial victory over Rayo Vallecano on Sunday.
Madrid sealed the win after being awarded a penalty deep into stoppage time, roughly ten minutes beyond the regulation 90.
Reacting to the incident, Laporta said: “I have full trust in the League, the Federation and the officials in charge.
“These situations can happen, but what we don’t want is for them to keep happening to the same side. Things need to be corrected in some way, especially when certain situations are very clear.”
The Barcelona chief stressed that his comments were not meant as an attack, but as a call for improvement.
Laporta then addressed the specifics of the Real Madrid versus Rayo Vallecano match.
“Yesterday I joked about ‘diving’, but honestly, I watched the game and I still don’t understand where those ten minutes of added time came from,” he said. “There are many moments where players are starting to exaggerate contact. That should be punished with a card.”
He went on to compare LaLiga with other competitions to underline his point.
“I recently watched a Premier League match and players were being booked for stamping and diving,” Laporta noted, before adding his view on the outcome. “Rayo Vallecano left that game feeling very unfairly treated. I say that purely as a fan.”
Laporta also questioned the consistency of penalty decisions.
“There are some penalties I simply would not give,” he said. “The striker was not kicked, he went down and exaggerated the contact.”
He ended by widening the discussion to include the media landscape.
“I’m saying this in a constructive way. Sometimes these decisions even benefit us,” he admitted. “But there is a club with its own television channel constantly claiming referees are against them, and that creates reactions.”
Laporta closed with a final challenge: “Has nobody analysed this properly? They really should take a closer look.”
Leave a Reply