FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta has stated that the club is considering protesting against the disallowed “phantom goal” during the 2-3 El Clasico loss to Real Madrid. The loss dropped Barcelona 11 points behind Real Madrid in the La Liga. With six matches left, Real Madrid have all but sealed their 36th La Liga title. After crashing out of the UEFA Champions League, FC Barcelona will end the season without a trophy.
Joan Laporta expresses dissatisfaction with the refereeing
After the El Clasico defeat all but ended Barcelona’s chance at winning La Liga, club president Joan Laporta raised concerns about the follies of VAR in the match. Laporta was specifically upset about Lamine Yamal’s “phantom goal” that was disallowed. The ball seemed to have crossed the goal line before Madrid goalkeeper Lunin knocked it away.
Speaking about the “phantom goal”, Laporta said: “Yesterday there were several questionable moments, but above all there is one that is key and could lead to a change in the outcome of the match.
As you can imagine, I am talking about Lamine Yamal’s ghost goal. As a club, we want to be sure of what happened and I would like to inform you that Barcelona will ask the Technical Committee of Referees and the Royal Spanish Football Federation to provide us with all the images and audio recordings of the incident”.
Barcelona threatens legal action
Laporta added that if the goal was deemed valid after a thorough review, Barcelona wouldn’t hesitate to take legal action and might even request the match to be replayed.
Laporta said: “If, once we have analysed the evidence, we believe that there was an error in the assessment of the situation,” Laporta continued, which is what we think happened, we will take all the appropriate action to correct the matter, not excluding any legal action that may be necessary.
“If it is confirmed that it was a legal goal, we will go further and ask for the match to be replayed, as happened in a European match due to an error by the VAR.”
Joan Laporta is not a fan of VAR
Joan Laporta has criticised VAR on numerous occasions in the past as well. He has been critical of the system for some time. Speaking further on the matter, Laportra said:
“This is not a gratuitous or advantageous situation, but one that we need to carry out because of our helpless situation and because we have experienced bad decisions that have directly harmed us and others that have benefited our opponents. When both are added together, they produce the gap in points that exists at the top of the table.”
