"The Barcelona players were on the verge of losing control, and Roura couldn't hold them back!"
That was the first thing Ancelotti said to the Real Madrid players when the team returned to the away dressing room with a one-goal lead.
After Yang Yang gave Real Madrid the lead from the penalty spot in the thirteenth minute, Barcelona began launching a counterattack.
In the fifteenth minute, Neymar dribbled forcefully into the penalty area, only to suddenly fall inside Real Madrid's box. But the referee neither called a foul against Real Madrid nor awarded a penalty. He even turned around and cautioned Neymar for going down twice inside Real Madrid's penalty area, which provoked intense outrage from the Barcelona players.
If that incident had still been under control, then things changed in the thirty-third minute, when Sánchez went down inside Real Madrid's penalty area once again. Not only did all ninety-five thousand Barcelona fans protest in unison, but the Barcelona players also surrounded the referee again, and they nearly came to blows with the Real Madrid players.
Sánchez believed he had broken through, but Xabi Alonso, tracking back behind him, committed a foul that threw him off balance and sent him tumbling inside the box, costing him a chance to face the goalkeeper one-on-one.
If Yang Yang's fall just now had been a penalty, then shouldn't Sánchez's fall have been a penalty too?
But referee Malienko's stance was extremely firm. He said that his decision matched the assistant referee's. Although Sánchez had shaken off Azpilicueta, he had not completely beaten Xabi Alonso. Instead, the more experienced Xabi Alonso had used physical contact to tie him up.
Malienko believed that Sánchez had fallen because he wanted a penalty too badly. The physical contact between Xabi Alonso and Sánchez was not enough for