Penalty polémica hides Barça's vanishing act as Zidane finds a way | Sid Lowe

The fallout from Saturday’s clásico has focused on VAR but the real story is a familiar one: Zinedine Zidane getting the better of a muddled Barcelona team

“I’m just pissed that we lost,” Sergiño Dest said. His teammates had already disappeared down the tunnel, swiftly ducking out of sight, and now he was alone: a 19-year-old American in an empty arena trying to explain how Barcelona had been beaten in the clásico again. “I think we deserved more,” he said, which he at least probably did, standing there in front of the TV camera at the end of an afternoon in which he might have been Barça’s best player. “We had chances, they had chances,” he offered. “They were just a bit sharper in taking them, and that was it.”

Only that wasn’t it and never is. When the final whistle went a minute or so after Luka Modric had scored the third in a 3-1 Real Madrid win, Barcelona manager Ronald Koeman had shaken hands with Zinedine Zidane and then waited by the tunnel for the referee, Juan Martínez Munuera. “Why,” he wanted to know, “is there only VAR against Barcelona?” When Sevilla had brought down Lionel Messi in the last minute the VAR had not intervened, he noted. When Getafe might have had two red cards, it hadn’t either, he said: had the referee not been watching last week? Now when Ramos had fallen to the floor, it had. “Someone has to explain VAR to me,” he insisted.

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from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/oct/26/barcelona-real-madrid-clasico-penalty-polemica-hides-vanishing-act-zidane-finds-way