{"id":16928,"date":"2026-01-19T09:28:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T03:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/?p=680962"},"modified":"2026-01-19T09:28:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T03:58:47","slug":"frenkie-de-jong-slams-refereeing-as-barcelona-fall-2-1-in-controversial-la-liga-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/football\/frenkie-de-jong-slams-refereeing-as-barcelona-fall-2-1-in-controversial-la-liga-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Frenkie de Jong slams refereeing as Barcelona fall 2-1 in controversial La Liga defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Barcelona suffered a frustrating 2-1 defeat in last night\u2019s La Liga clash, with post-match discussions dominated by strong criticism of the referee from both players and the head coach. The result left Bar\u00e7a players visibly angry, as they felt key moments went against them during a tense encounter.<\/p>\n<p>Midfielder Frenkie de Jong did not hold back after the final whistle, claiming the referee showed a lack of respect towards the Barcelona players. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t even speak with the referee, he looked at us like he\u2019s better than us,\u201d De Jong said while reflecting on the controversial officiating. The Dutch international was particularly unhappy with the lack of added time, despite what he felt was excessive time-wasting by the opposition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is shameful that with all the time they\u2019ve wasted, they didn\u2019t even add a single minute. Not even the captain could talk to the referee,\u201d De Jong added, highlighting the growing frustration within the Barcelona camp. According to him, the referee appeared overly strict with Bar\u00e7a players.<\/p>\n<p>De Jong also pointed out that this was not an isolated incident, suggesting a pattern in recent visits to the same ground. \u201cThe same thing happened to us here last year. The referee can be more lenient toward the players. It seemed like he was eager to hand out cards to us,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barcelona suffered a frustrating 2-1 defeat in last night\u2019s La Liga clash, with post-match discussions dominated by strong criticism of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":37701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[661,4083,238,3724,3796,3311,564,3919,3738,266,3975,4149],"class_list":["post-16928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-barcelona","tag-de-jong","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-fermin-lopez","tag-football","tag-frenkie-de-jong","tag-hansi-flick","tag-la-liga","tag-lamine-yamal","tag-real-madrid","tag-real-soceidad","tag-referee"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}