Barcelona president Laporta warns action planned over Yamal ‘ghost goal’ in lengthy statement

Barcelona president Joan Laporta has released a lengthy statement after their 3-2 defeat at Real Madrid.

Barca are fuming after Lamine Yamal was denied a goal by VAR with LaLiga lacking goalline technology.

Laporta’s statement read:

“From Barcelona Football Club we will immediately request the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) and the RFEF to provide us with all the images and audio generated by the play (of Lamine Yamal‘s ghost goal). If, once the documentation has been analysed, the club understands that there was an error in the assessment of the play, which is what we think, we will implement the appropriate measures that are necessary to reverse the situation without, obviously, ruling out judicial situations that may arise. If it is confirmed that it was a legal goal as we think, we will go further and ask for a replay of the match just as happened in another European match due to a VAR error.

“As president of Barca, I want to convey the dissatisfaction caused by the fact that, one day after one of the most important matches on the world calendar, a tool such as VAR is setting our agenda. I have never been one of the great defenders of VAR because it takes away spontaneity from the game. But, since we have it, I am in favour of using it to avoid errors that lead to unfair decisions, rather than creating confusion and showing contradictory criteria depending on the games and the teams.

“We have a competition followed by millions of followers, but that does not mean we can remain untouched by criticism when the use of VAR undervalues the competition. We understand the difficulty of refereeing work but precisely for this reason the VAR is a tool that must serve to have a fairer competition and not the other way around. Yesterday there were several debatable plays but among all of them there is one that is capital and that could be key in the final result of the game. From here at the club we want to be sure of what happened.

“I want to say that although we focus on this play, we disagree on various actions which could have been observed by the VAR and the tool was ignored by the referee. The club’s position is not gratuitous or advantageous but rather an action that is forced upon us by the indefensable situation we are experiencing, and by having suffered erroneous decisions ourselves and others that have benefitted our rival, the two added together are shown in the distance of points at the top of the league.”