Barcelona suffered a surprising loss to Inter Milan in their UEFA Champions League group-stage encounter at the San Siro on Tuesday.
It was a game full of drama and controversies, with the referee’s decisions going against Xavi Hernandez’s side and leaving them third in their group after the defeat.
The Blaugrana were so annoyed with the referee Slavko Vincic’s poor performance that they decided to complain against him to UEFA after the match.
Barca wants him banned from ever officiating their games after being left extremely agitated with his decisions.
One of the calls that infuriated the Spanish side the most happened in the dying minutes of the game.
In the added time after 90 minutes, Barca found a major chance to get an equalizer and a point from the game after Denzel Dumfries headed a cross into his right hand.
While it looked like a perfectly clear penalty, with Dumfries’ hand in an unnatural position, the referee opted to consult VAR and look at the replay himself on the pitchside monitor.
After a lengthy review, Vincic decided not to give the penalty as he saw no obstruction in it.
In fact, after the game, it was stated later that he had felt that the ball only struck Ansu Fati’s hand and didn’t touch Dumfries at all.
This left Xavi furious and his complaining got him a yellow card from the referee.
On the other dugout, Inter Milan manager Simone Inzaghi had the funniest reaction possible.
He looked at the referee in almost the most guilty way possible, having an expression resembling the ‘Looking Monkey’.
The Awkward Looking Monkey puppet is derived from a puppet show in a Japanese children’s programme ‘Ōkiku Naru Ko.’
It shows a monkey giving a side glance to the camera and then looking away, almost in the guiltiest way possible. Incidentally, this was actually not shown in the show but made with the help of Photoshop back in 2016.
This double-image meme gained popularity around 2019 as a reactionary meme used on social media. It was basically made to describe some awkward situations or one which features someone becoming quite guilty of doing something.
Inzaghi’s expression is uncannily similar to the monkey’s, as he has an absolute identical side glance when looking at the referee during the VAR call.
The legendary Italian footballer is a bonafide student of the game and is well aware of all the rules, which is why he probably felt that his side got away with a chance there.
Barcelona fans are probably not finding any humour in this at all, as they’re still angry at being robbed of at least a point at the San Siro.
They have a tough road to the end of the group stages and need to win their remaining three games, while hoping Bayern Munich lose a game, to even have a chance at topping their group.
The Blaugrana meet Inter in their next game at Camp Nou on 12 October and perhaps we can expect a fresh round of meme-like expressions – as well as some controversy – in that fixture too.
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