Reputations make referee’s job harder
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Refereeing at the Camp Nou, in front of almost 100,000 fans is unlikely to be particularly easy. Especially, when you consider that it is the El Clásico with the partisan crowd looking for anything remotely resembling a 50-50 call to go the home side’s way.
But blocking out crowds is possible, however, trying to find out which is the foul and which isn’t when the players are feigning injury and creating mountains out of molehills, certainly isn’t. So you certainly understand why referee Hernandez Hernandez might have found it difficult to do his job with Dani Alves and Pepe going down like they were shot, when the contact was minimal.
While the referee let plenty go unpunished, perhaps the major reason why he was a talking point was because of the decisions that he did and didn’t give. The decision to not send off Ramos, not once but twice before the second yellow came around was certainly one such instance. Ruling out a perfectly valid header from Gareth Bale for a non-existent foul on the defender was another.
It is certainly not fair to blame the referee for off-side calls but it was fair to say that he had a memorable game and will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
