Barcelona left the Coliseum Alfonso Perez enormously frustrated with how things went against Getafe in their 0-0 draw. Chiefly because they didn’t take the three points, secondly because they felt they were denied a penalty, and thirdly for the general handling of the game by the referee.
In particular the latter has struck a chord with the media and fans in Spain, questioning whether the new practice of adding on more time to combat time-wasting is effective.
According to Marca, the ball was in play for 56 of the 116 minutes of play on Sunday night, meaning fans were watching for an entire hour without any football happening. In total, the match saw 25 minutes of added time, without seeing any goals or any VAR decisions until the final moments.
“It’s a real disgrace that LaLiga makes decisions like that. Getafe wasted 20 or 30 minutes, and they added 9. It’s a disgrace,” Frenkie de Jong told MD after the game.
“The referees and LaLiga have to make different decisions, like the Premier League. The referees have to stop time-wasting now.”
“I think they are too permissive,” Xavi Hernandez explained to Relevo.
“If we sell the LaLiga product and what we have is this… It’s not positive for anyone […] It’s a disgrace for me, we need effective time in football, we’re making a fool of ourselves.”
Xavi has been asking for some time that football times are done based on a stopwatch, as is the case with basketball. In terms of play, the match did actually see around the same amount of time as most games, with Marca showing that average playing times across the big five leagues ranged from 53 to 57 minutes last season.
No doubt the decision to add on lots of extra minutes is at least an effort to address the issue, however the quality of these minutes must also come into question. If the game is constantly stopped and paused, then it hurts the rhythm and the aesthetics of the game, which is where a solution must be found.
Time wasting overall is a problem, but the bigger deal in this case was the unwillingness or inability of the match referee to stop the repeated fouls early on. He could have, didn’t, and Getafe took that as approval to keep doing what they were doing. The match descended into chaos as a result, with the final straw being a phantom hand ball being called in order to not get the fans riled up by awarding Barca a penalty at the very end.
Soto Grande has a lot to answer for. I hope someone in the league office is asking those questions.
Barca is obviously broke as they can’t afford to bribe the referees anymore :p
That said was a poorly officiated game. Getafe had no interest in playing football and I think Barca is actually going to regress a little this year. I think it’s real v atlético for the title