Pushing Xavi by two Barbastro players after the end of the Cup match

2024-01-08 10:13:40

Normally, soccer games end with the opponents, coaches and players of each team, sportingly shaking hands. Unfortunately, that did not happen after the Cup round of 32 match played this Sunday between Barcelona and Barbastro, from the Second RFEF, and which ended with the Catalan team’s narrow victory (2-3). Xavi Hernández and two players from the Huesca club almost came to blows in a tense finale, as captured by the Movistar Plus+ cameras.

It all started when the Barcelona coach addresses the fourth referee after the end of the game was blown. Xavi was not at all happy with the referee’s performance and, in fact, received a yellow card in the 44th minute of the first half for protesting a disallowed goal against Barça. It was then that the substitute goalkeeper of the Aragonese team saw him and ended up confronting him to make him stop complaining. He even gave her a little push.

From that moment on, the rest of the Barbastro players had their ups and downs with the ‘Barcelona coach’ who tried unsuccessfully to shake their hands. They confronted him and he even received another slight push from midfielder Jesús Crespo, to which Xavi reacted between surprise and anger, as can be seen in the video. «Nothing has happened… These are party things. He protested. “He wanted the best for his team and I wanted the best for mine and nothing…things about the game,” the footballer justified in statements to ‘El Chiringuito’.

In any case, things did not go further and the protagonists of the match retired to the locker room tunnel without further incident. In fact, Arnau, the local goalkeeper, said goodbye to the Barça coach in a friendly manner, although the reaction of his teammates to one of the best Spanish footballers of all time is surprising. Of course, it so happens that Óscar Hernández, Xavi’s brother and Barcelona assistant coach, was expelled. The match report states that “once the match was over and while he was still on the field of play, he went towards the fourth referee, recriminating one of my decisions and subsequently went towards members of the local coaching staff in an exalted attitude.”