He should be out of El Clasico after 11 minutes. He became a hero. This is why VAR was silent

When Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang left the field on the 70th minute, his grin struck the sad faces of Real Madrid supporters. Santiago Bernabeu, saying goodbye to the hero of the match, whistled shyly. But this story could have happened the other way around: instead of two goals and a spectacular assist, he could have left the field an hour earlier with a red card after a foul on. Then he would be sad and the stadium would be joyful. The hosts would outnumber the guests, and the guests would have a big problem. But Judge Jose Luis Munuera did not take the paper at all and Aubameyang became the hero of Barcelona.

– This is a red card, but it is difficult to judge live by a judge – claims the Pole, who was selected the best judge of 2021 in MLS. Slow motion often highlights the event, but here the player is late and attacks a place where the ball has never really been. VAR did not send the shot to the referee because Aubameyang’s leg was not completely straight. He bent her and slightly cushioned the entrance. But for me it is a red card – he emphasizes.

And if the situation in football can change dramatically in a second, two months are almost an eternity.

On January 20, Al-Nassr wanted to borrow the Gabonese, and if not for his alleged heart problems, he would probably play in Saudi Arabia today instead of Barcelona. In London, they didn’t want him because he was always late and was setting a bad example for the rest of the team, so he got separated from them. And that he earned – according to various sources – from 250 to 350 thousand. pounds a week, Arsenal even considered borrowing, just to throw him off the payroll. By handing him over to Barcelona on the last day of the transfer window, he felt he was solving the problem.

On March 20, Aubameyang played a concert at the Santiago Bernabeu. In the eleventh game for Barcelona he scored the eighth and ninth goals. He brought joy and spontaneity to the team. Goals, but also work that eludes statistics. He fitted into the system as if he had spent his entire childhood in La Masia. So far, we haven’t heard of any delays, fights or parties. The Aubameyang pineapple duo – Ousmane Dembele, the most dangerous, remains on the pitch, although there were doubts as to whether if they grabbed the arm, they would not blow up the entire Camp Nou. Meanwhile, it was their action – Dembele’s cross and Aubameyang’s head shot – that launched Real on Sunday. Gabon is not a problem anymore. He was promoted to “gift from heaven”, says Xavi.

In January, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang seemed like a lost footballer. In March, he is the hero of Barcelona

The aforementioned diagnosis of heart problems was added to the airline ticket from Cameroon to London by the doctors of the Gabon national team. They probably acted on the orders of the coach and president of the federation, who wanted to be removed from the national team during the African Nations Cup, but without fueling rumors about his scandalous behavior. It started with the party, after which he – the squad captain and Mario Lemina – the second biggest star, contracted the coronavirus and missed the opening match. Isolated from the rest of the team, Aubameyang spearheaded a strike that would force union officials to pay tournament bonuses before the opening match. And when he left his hotel room ten days later, he was supposed to go straight to the party, from which he returned drunk in the company of his brother and several women. He got into a fight with the bodyguards. Then the other representatives ran out of patience and demanded that he be sent home. A thorough heart examination performed in London revealed no abnormalities. Barcelona also looked at it carefully before the transfer. Gabonese journalists, whose reports Aubameyang vehemently denied, triumphed. If his heart was fine, why did he leave the training camp?

Barcelona had doubts about him. Xavi, yes, he wanted a new striker, but he was very specific – he pointed to. Aubameyang, 32, without a goal since October, after getting sick of COVID-19 and blamed for all the wrong with Gabon’s national team, was no alternative to him. He was not on the list of purchases at all, because then – at the end of January – he seemed to be a burned out footballer who, with this level of motivation, only had to cut coupons from his former fame. Aubameyang’s agent suggested him to Barcelona, ​​however, and persuaded Arsenal to terminate his contract. It was only when he became a free player, Barcelona, ​​who had financial problems, that she could hire him. And this – as journalists from “The Athletic” claim – required a lot of creativity to meet the financial fair play rules imposed by the league. – We got everything done two minutes early. My heart was beating like crazy – the forward admitted in an interview with “Sport”.

When Barcelona announced the transfer, fans sent each other comments from Xavi from 2020, who while training Al-Saad, was very eager to comment on everything that happened at Camp Nou. He then stated that the club needed players who would feel comfortable in the game in a small space. And he gave Aubameyang and as anti-examples. – They are only deadly if they are kept open. They are not suitable for playing in Barcelona, ​​he said. But the team Xavi is leading from behind the line is different to the team he played for. Besides, it’s easier to talk about idealism when you are in Qatar and are not responsible for anything. As a coach, Xavi obviously cares about certain principles, but he does not shy away from the more direct game in which Aubameyang feels best. His rhetoric changed after a few matches. – He is a very positive player who fits perfectly into the dressing room and adapted to the circumstances. He creates opportunities, scores a lot of goals and works for the team. Training him is an honor – said the Barcelona coach before the match with Real.

He dreamed of such a game in El Clasico. But he saw himself in a Real Madrid jersey

It is impossible to analyze the current situation without telling about Aubameyang’s mother. Her name is Margarita, she is Spanish, born an hour and a half from Madrid. Together with the Gabonese – Pierre-Francois, she raised her son in France. Every summer she took him to her family and made sure that he spoke Spanish. This allowed Aubameyang to find himself in Barcelona’s dressing room so quickly. He quickly established relationships with his colleagues, coaches and employees of the club because he understands Spanish and Spaniards.

Although he had been planning for a long time to play in La Liga and dreamed of such a performance at El Clasico many times, he saw himself in the white Real Madrid jersey. He promised his grandfather, who died in 2014, that he would one day join this club. The somersaults, often performed after goals, are said to be a tribute to Hugo Sanchez, a former Real striker and his grandfather’s favorite footballer. But there was no room for Aubameyang in Real, because Karim Benzema has been playing in the middle of the attack for years, and until recently Cristiano Ronaldo has been running on the left flank. No coach would put them on a bench to make room for a Gabonese. – It was a bit different with this grandfather too. He was a fan, so to make him a bit angry, I said I would be joining Real someday, Aubameyang clarified last month. – I even wanted to play for the Spanish national team, but in the end I chose Gabon because of my father’s background. I fulfilled my dream of playing in Spain in Barcelona – he added.

And also – indirectly – my mother contributed to it. She has been ill for several years, so the son often flew from London to France to accompany her. The problem was, he was returning from her later than Arsenal had requested. As a result, he was late for training and pre-match training camps. Pierre-Emerick also did not closely follow the changing restrictions, so after one of his visits to his mother, he did not perform a PCR test and was quarantined after landing in the UK. Today, Spaniards joke that if it were not for my mother’s illness and the necessity to travel so often, the Arsenal coach would not lose his patience with him and would not let him go to Barcelona for free. There would be no two goals from him in the Classic and so much hope that this season – a victory in the Europa League and a runner-up – can still be finished with a bang.