But Barça were their own worst enemy too often.
Real Madrid won the league by three points, with a potential tiebreaker against them, and with such a thin margin, people will look at how refereeing decisions may have changed the outcome.
In particular, two games had egregious refereeing mistakes go against Barcelona that, had they been called correctly, would have meant Barça would have been champions.
There was a late winner incorrectly ruled out against Real Betis, when the ball went clearly across the goal line but the ref said no goal. 1-1 it ended, and two points dropped.
Wow http://pic.twitter.com/ytNUqbpgqA
— Tomasz Mortimer (@TMortimerFtbl) January 29, 2017
Then there were two clear handballs not called when Villarreal’s Bruno Soriano on two occasions handled the ball inside the box. Barcelona should have at least a penalty and at least a man advantage in a match that ended 1-1.
These are stonewall decisions, not arguable at all.
Of course, there were more dodgy calls against Barcelona. And dodgy ones in favor of Barcelona, in favor of Real Madrid, against Real Madrid, in favor of any team, against any team.
And we have to talk about how Barcelona threw away the title with poor performances against the minnows of La Liga.
Then, there’s the “butterfly effect.” A changed decision would have affected how every subsequent event happened. Had Barcelona gotten a penalty and equalized against Villarreal, would it have, improbably, spurned a Villarreal comeback? Would Lionel Messi still hit a late free kick like he did in our timeline? Who knows.
Just as much, I would reject the argument that since Barcelona made mistakes, no amount of refereeing decisions can be blamed. It’s true that Barça made mistakes, but so does every team, Real Madrid arguably made just as many. A team should be allowed to make mistakes and still win, not be doomed by poor refereeing. That’s not to say that’s exactly what happened, but just hypothetically. A team making mistakes is inevitable and should not on its own mean that referees are right to doom them.
Unfortunately the refereeing standard in La Liga is poor, and doesn’t match the high quality of the play. It’s not just individual decisions but conceptual problems and inconsistency. For example, “what is a handball?” or “is a handball an automatic yellow?” are questions observers are still not sure of.
If the way to improve is technology, so be it. But there are problems at the conceptual level that can only be fixed by humans making decisions. We may need both here.
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