Iago Aspas could not contain his rage. An impotence that translated into his repeated protests to referee Soto Grado. At the end of the first half, after receiving a foul from Gerard Martín, the Celta captain asked for the second yellow card for the Barça youth player. But Gerard Martín did not receive the warning; Aspas, however, yes. When they returned from the field after the break, Héctor Fort replaced Gerard Martín. “It is difficult to say that Gerard Martín’s second was not yellow. Luckily Iago managed to calm down during the break. It is wrong that the VAR does not enter a second yellow. Flick and I saw it the same way seeing what happened at half-time,” stressed Giráldez, Celta coach. Flick, for his part, completed: “I make changes based on performance, not because the players have a yellow card. “It’s not my job to talk about the referees.”
Although the full-back was saved from leaving Barça with 10, Casadó did not have the same luck. And Celta did enforce Casadó’s expulsion in the 80th minute. Four minutes later, the Galician team had equalized the duel. “We had it under control, but the expulsion has had a big impact on us. They have been two specific plays. If you stop being focused and involved in the game, this happens to you. It can’t happen to us. Not just Celta, any team creates a lot of problems for you,” analyzed Gavi, who returned to being a starter after more than a year. His last time, on November 7, 2023. “It wasn’t 10 minutes, we played a very bad game,” said Flick. The coach, angry like few other times since he landed at Barcelona, gathered his players in the Balaídos locker room. “Everyone can play much better than they did today,” concluded the Barça coach.
“We haven’t put in what the game required and what happened has happened. Starting with me, I made a gross mistake,” said Koundé, about his mistake in Celta’s first goal. “It can’t happen again. I accept this error. Even so, we were winning by two. But we had a lack of concentration, for example, I saw that the ball went out, but I have to continue. I wasn’t involved today, I assume. We have lost two very important points. We tied the game due to our mistakes,” the French full-back concluded.
Flick, on the other hand, did not want to point out any of his players. “The tie is the result of the entire match… Many errors, many bad passes, losses of possession and bad decisions. It’s not because of the red, it’s not because of Koundé’s mistake. We won together… not today, we have lost two points, and we do it together. We will return”, concluded the Barcelona coach.
