FC Barcelona and Real Madrid share a rivalry that has spanned for decades now and goes on off and on the pitch every season in La Liga, and in any other competition in which both these teams are competing.
However, there has been an instance of this rivalry between the individuals associated with the two clubs in official meetings. Just such an instance has been reported by Mundo Deportivo, in which they provide the story of a meeting between the first-division coaches and the arbitration team in Spain.
In this meeting, the Real Madrid coach, Carlo Ancelotti, asked for a lesser prominence of VAR this season. To this request, the head of the arbitration group, Medina Cantalejo, also replied positively and told Ancelotti that this was also the intention of his group.
Xavi Hernandez spoke immediately after this conversation and asked for an entirely opposite case, i.e. frequent usage of VAR to do justice to every team involved. Xavi argued that VAR was invented and implemented to eliminate errors and help the referees, and not to be used sparingly in matches.
There were other matters discussed in this meeting as well. For instance, both the Real Madrid and Barcelona coaches agreed that time wasters should be punished and effective playing time should be increased through every possible measure.
Another matter discussed in this meeting was related to the dismissal of coaches from the touchline after a red card, and Xavi himself also revealed that in this meeting it was agreed that the protests and comments from coaches will be allowed to go unpunished unless there were insults involved.
However, Xavi was expelled yesterday during the match against Getafe CF for his complaints and this goes against the agreement reached in this meeting.
There are two other points raised in Mundo Deportivo’s report. Firstly, this report claims that Ancelotti has already gone unpunished after complaining about an invented penalty, and thus Xavi is unlikely to be penalized for his criticism of the referee giving a handball on Gavi, instead of a penalty for Barcelona.
Lastly, the Barcelona technical staff was also critical of the aspect that Xavi was more often shown on TV complaining to the fourth official, while Bordalas, who also kept complaining to the official, was only shown complaining once. Thus, the club believes this selective coverage is aimed to tarnish the image of Xavi.