"We lost because of your fucking fault"

BarcelonaReal Madrid did not take the elimination from the Champions League against Bayern well. The quarter-finals were tighter than initially thought. So much so that, despite the 1-2 first-leg win at the Bernabéu, in the 86th minute of the return leg in Munich, the whites had managed to equalize the tie. But Eduardo Camavinga received a second yellow card for an act of indiscipline and, with 10 players, the Bavarians scored two goals that certified their qualification (4-3, 6-4 on aggregate).

Before the expulsion, Madrid, physically exhausted, held the score as best they could with the entire team locked in their area. They were good minutes of football for Bayern, who had also had good chances to score. The football analysis suggests that, with or without an expulsion, the Munich club would have advanced to the next round anyway. But Madridistas have clung to the red card to justify the defeat. They consider it unfair.

"It's your fault, your fucking fault," snapped Dani Carvajal, captain of Real Madrid, who watched the match from the bench. The defender reacted, full of rage, against the referee, the Slovenian Slavko Vincic, as captured by Movistar cameras. He repeated the expression on several occasions while pointing at him with his finger. He was not the only footballer, not by a long shot. The players on the field had already shown their disagreement at the time of the action, but when the match ended, they surrounded the referee, who got rid of them as best he could. One of them, Arda Güller, author of two goals in the match, was expelled while his teammates held him back.

Both in the press conference and in the post-match statements to the audiovisual media, Álvaro Arbeloa completely avoided self-criticism and considered that the expulsion had been the trigger for the match. "The referee has ruined the tie," he said bluntly. Bellingham, in the mixed zone, directly said that the red card was a "joke".

In general terms, the media following Real Madrid's current affairs have accepted the club's refereeing thesis and have exonerated the Madrid players. In fact, they consider that Los Blancos played one of their best games of the season.