Barcelona vice-president, Carles Vilarrubí, has hit out at UEFA on RAC1 and Catalunya Ràdio.
The Barça man has said that the club feels cheated by both Europe’s governing body and Michel Platini and that it has every intention of getting to the bottom of the matter, even if that means taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He also slammed the attitude displayed by the UEFA delegate at the match against Bayer Leverkusen at the Camp Nou.
“We don’t like UEFA. It’s an organisation that turns its back on reality, and that’s led them to the state they’re in. It’s insane to tell our club members what they have to do in their stadium. They can’t ban them from doing certain things in their own stadium”, he said. Barça will have to pay a 40,000 fine for displaying ‘estelades’ (Catalan nationalist flags) during the Leverkusen game. “The UEFA delegate who attended the game came looking for trouble. In the 17th minute of the match I saw him taking photos of the flags on his smartphone”, he said.
Barça have broken off all contact with UEFA and are prepared to pursue the matter to the very end. “I don’t know what they intend, but there is no diplomatic solution to this. We feel cheated by Platini and we’ll take our case before the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if we have to”.