While the gesture caused a stir, Raphinha's comments regardingthe performance of the match officials have drawn even more scrutiny. The Brazilian did not hold back in his assessment of the refereeing, using particularly strong language to describe the perceived injustice on the pitch. He said onTNT Sports Brasil: "For me, we were robbedI don’t want to talk about the refereeing, but we played extremely well, they committed I don’t know how many fouls, and the referee didn’t even pull out a single yellow card against them. The refereeing was very bad in all the decisions he made."
The frustration within the Blaugrana camp stemmed from several key moments, including a disallowed Ferran Torres goal and a rejected penalty appeal for a challenge on Dani Olmo.Raphinha further questioned the consistency of the decisions, stating: “It’s human to commit one error, but for it to happen again in another game? We played really well, but this tie was robbed from us. It was tough, especially when we see that we needed to put in three times the effort to win the match. I really want to understand why [the referee] is so scared of Barca getting through the tie.”