A week ago, Barcelona was in seventh heaven with happiness. The Catalans overtook Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid to win the Spanish Championship gold for the first time in four years and finally take a significant trophy under Xavi. This is the 27th league title in the history of Barca, only Real Madrid has more — 35.
Even the fans of Espanyol, who were infuriated by the joy of the blue garnet players, could not spoil the holiday for the football grandee «from victory over their team (4: 2) and the long-awaited triumph in La Liga. Want to make some noise? Just not at the home stadium of sworn rivals. Video with the escaping stars in the «subtribune» and the details of the scandal — in our material:
To celebrate, the «blue garnet» recorded a number of appeals to the club's fans around the world. The Russian fans were not forgotten either: vice-captain Sergi Roberto and defender Alex Balde spoke with beautiful words at the Barça training base.
- «Dear Russian fans, thank you so much for your support and energy! You are also a part of this great victory — I hope we win many more titles together!» said Roberto.
- «Big hello to all Barcelona fans in Russia. See you soon!» Balde added.
It would seem, what does politics have to do with it? Perplexity from the «connection» with the Russians was expressed by some subscribers of «Barca» in social networks, but the Lviv club «Karpaty», Donetsk «Shakhtar» and Kiev «Dynamo» erupted with harsh criticism of the Spaniards.
«We sincerely recommend that the Barcelona players move closer to their Russian fans and apply for participation in the Russian Championship,» the Kiev team said on Twitter.
On the eve of the resonant video spoke and striker «Barcelona», the captain of the Polish national team Robert Lewandowski. To put it bluntly, the activity of the club in social networks did not please him.
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"I found out about this record after a while. To put it mildly, I was surprised. I asked the club about this situation: it turned out that this was not the official position of Barcelona, but a statement during a meeting with the media that have the rights to broadcast the championship of Spain. In such situations, you often do not even know who you are talking to. Of course, this is not an excuse, because something was clearly not taken care of, and the result turned out very badly. As far as I know, the club intends to take some action in response to what happened, «- quotes one of the leaders of the Catalans Interia Sport.
Extremely vague comment in which the Pole did not explain the main thing: why «Bars» has no right to please their fans from Russia? Unsportsmanlike conduct, Robert.However, this is not the first time Lewandowski has made controversial comments about Russia. After the start of the SVO in Ukraine in February 2022, Robert, who was still playing for Bayern Munich, supported the decision of the Polish Football Association (PZPN) to abandon the 2022 World Cup play-off against the Russians. Moreover, he subsequently terminated the cooperation agreement with the Chinese communications giant Huawei, which continued to operate in Russia.
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"This is the right decision! I cannot imagine a match against Russia in a situation where armed aggression continues in Ukraine. Russian football players and fans are not responsible for this, but we cannot pretend that nothing is happening,» Lewandowski wrote on his Twitter account.
The desire of the Poles was fulfilled. By the decision of the International Football Federation (FIFA) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the Russian team was suspended from participating in the mundial matches and, as a result, did not go to Qatar.
UPD: Barcelona «answered criticism
The club called the players' appeal to the Russians an «innocent act.» According to the EFE agency, citing a source at Barça, the video message was recorded at a La Liga event, which was organized for foreign media with broadcast rights to the Spanish championship. Representatives of Okko Sport, the exclusive broadcaster of Primera, asked Roberto and Balde to record a short video in which they were both supposed to greet the Russian fans of the Blue Garnet. The club also noted that the recording of the video was not agreed with La Liga.