Spain in uproar over Barca-Madrid Super Cup pitch violence

Aug 18, 2011 |

Barcelona

Tags:

Spain reacted with outrage on Thursday after Barcelona's 3-2 Super Cup win over Real Madrid descended into violent scenes with defeated coach Jose Mourinho jabbing a rival in the eye.

Television images and photos on the front pages on Thursday showed Mourinho poking his finger into the eye of Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola's assistant Tito Vilanova as players brawled on the field.

"Pito Vilanova? I don't know who this Pito is," Mourinho said after the match.

Television pictures showed the Portuguese coach walking over to Vilanova at the side of the pitch and poking him in the left eye.

Barcelona's Vilanova could then be seen giving a smiling Mourinho a hard slap in the back as he walked away.

A Lionel Messi double took the European and Spanish champions Barcelona to a 5-4 aggregate win over bitter rivals Real Madrid in their Super Cup second leg clash in the Camp Nou.

But the bad feeling between the two sides boiled over at the end of the match, which ran past midnight and into the early hours of Thursday.

Brazilian Marcelo set off the sparks when he was dismissed for a late challenge on former Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas, who made his debut towards the end of the game.

In an ensuing brawl on the pitch, Mesut Ozil of Real Madrid and Barcelona's David Villa were also sent off, bringing the red-card total to three.

Fabregas tried to play down the scrap, saying after the match: "It is very competitive football, they are the two greatest clubs in the world, it is a very strong rivalry."

But the press lashed out.

"Deplorable Madrid, deplorable Mourinho," blared a headline in Barcelona-based sports daily ‘Mundo Deportivo’ above pictures of Mourinho's eye-jab.

"Deplorable Mourinho," said the front page of the daily ‘Sport’.

"Mourinho and Guardiola's assistant Tito Vilanova were also deplorable protagonists in the final free-for-all. Mou put his finger in the eye of Pep's number two and he replied by slapping the Portuguese on the back," said Marca.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/91361" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-07df4dec65dda6f2cf3b148fd429873e" value="form-07df4dec65dda6f2cf3b148fd429873e" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88604145" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>