‘They’ve caused us serious harm’ – Barcelona explain reason for Champions League referee complaint

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Barcelona’s acting president Rafa Yuste has explained why the club have submitted another complaint to UEFA in the wake of their Champions League exit at the hands of Atletico Madrid.

The Catalans complained followed the first leg of the tie, after being left angered by the decision not to award a penalty and a red card to Marc Pubill, and had more issues after the return game.

Yuste says the club have been left outraged by some of the decisions and that they are hoping improvements can be made to avoid some issues in the future.

“We wanted to file a formal complaint with UEFA regarding the tie that eliminated us from the Champions League. These are serious errors that we wanted to convey in this statement, which are very well explained and which we believe do not comply with the rules of football. They have caused us serious economic and sporting harm, hence our outrage to UEFA,” he told reporters.

“We are also approaching this from a constructive perspective. Despite the elimination, we wanted to express to UEFA that things need to be done better. We believe that, nowadays, with six members of the officiating crew in a match, so many errors are unacceptable. We believe this is very damaging to football. We don’t understand how blatant fouls, with a VAR room available, aren’t called as we believe they should have been.”