Barcelona’s Clasico clash with Real Madrid on Sunday brought about plenty of chaos and controversy as is the norm when the two bitter rivals meet.
VAR played its role in the game and the audios have now
been released.
Let’s take a look:
The first audio relates to the early decision to rule out a penalty for a perceived foul by Lamine Yamal on Vinicius Jr. César Soto Grado is sent to the monitor and the conversation proceeds as follows:
“Okay, César, we’re going to show you two images in which you can see that Lamine has his foot planted first, on the ground, and it’s Vinicius who hits him from behind .”
Soto Grado watches and say: “Okay, stop me the moment when Lamine, with his foot… okay, there’s no tackle there. It’s Vini who hits him with his foot from behind. Lamine doesn’t make the tackle on player number 7, Vinicius, from Real Madrid. So I’m going to give a neutral bounce there. I’m going to whistle the foul because it’s Vinicius who hits Lamine Yamal.”
VAR reply: “The foul is correct.”
The next incident is the penalty for Real Madrid for a handball by Eric Garcia. The match referee didn’t give the decision originally but pointed to the spot after being sent to the monitor and being told by VAR: “César, I recommend a review to assess a possible penalty for handball.”
The conversation then proceeds as follows:
“I’m going to show you the position of the hand, in my opinion a punishable position. And the complete action so you can evaluate it.”
The ref replies: “Okay, okay, he hits it there, then a second rebound there. Okay, give me another image from behind, and now give me a wide one so I can see if there’s a player behind
“For me, stop it when it’s high. The position of that hand is very high. It bounces first off Eric, but it hits Bellingham and then Bellingham, that ball is going there and that position of the hand is high, as we have explained. That position of the hand is very high. It’s not low and it’s covering a space, I’m going to whistle a penalty .”
The penalty was given but was then brilliantly saved by Wojciech Szczęsny.
