Nadal on El Clásico: "The ref's job is hard enough without me adding my two cents' worth"

Rafa Nadal is a diehard madridista and self-confessed football fan but says he is not in the position to criticize the referee for some of the decisions made in Sunday's Clásico at Camp Nou in which Barcelona were reduced to 10 men and a couple of penalty appeals were ignored.

Nadal explained his point of view in today's press conference at the Mutua Madrid Open:

“I’m not going to comment on the referee’s performance in El Clásico. It’s not for me to talk about referees. The poor ref has enough to deal with everyone else discussing his job for hours on end without me adding fuel to the fire”, the tennis star said. “I will say this: if on Monday, we looked back at all of the incidents during the game and taken measures after the game, the ref’s job would be much easier. We’re talking about a sport of which I am a massive fan, and it’s not a criticism on my part; I watch football games right the way through the year but at the end of the day, the referee has a very difficult job to do because they have various players who try to trick them and that makes it even more complicated for them. So maybe if the players that did try to trick the ref or hit other players were punished after reviewing the game on a Monday, it might be a stop to it but maybe there’s no interest in doing that”.