After winning the Queen’s Cup, the Barça footballers received the champions’ medals from their own coaching staff this Saturday on the pitch of La Romareda (Zaragoza). “It’s a joke? “Is this a joke?” Salma Paralluelo asked, laughing, to one of the delegates while he gave her the decoration. The Barça forward had already experienced an unpleasant episode in January of last year in Mérida in the final of the Spanish Super Cup, when no one gave them the medals. The Barça footballers then had to approach a table to collect them in an image with an enormous symbolic load due to the comparison with what had happened in the men’s final, in which the then head of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, hung them around the footballers’ necks.
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Sandra Paños, Ona Batlle, Lucy Bronze, Ingrid Engen, Irene Paredes, Patri Guijarro, Aitana Bonmatí, Clàudia Pina, Caroline Graham Hansen, Salma Paralluelo and Mariona Caldentey
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Elene Lete, Iris Arnaiz, Manuela Vanegas, Nahia Aparicio, Alejandra Bernabé, Emma Ramírez, Andreia Jacinto, Sanni Franssi, Nerea Eizagirre, Synne Jensen and Amaiur Sarriegi
Goals 1-0 min. 5: Ona Batlle. 2-0 min. 12: Salma Paralluelo. 3-0 min. 18: Caroline Graham Hansen. 4-0 min. 25: Caroline Graham Hansen. 5-0 min. 33: Ona Batlle. 6-0 min. 47: Mariona Caldentey. 7-0 min. 51: Claudia Pina. 8-0 min. 58: Mariona Caldentey.
Referee María Eugenia Gil Soriano
Today’s situation, however, has been due to the RFEF protocol, which is the same for the Copa del Rey as for the women’s tournament. This establishes that the medals are awarded to the delegate and the trophy is given in hand to the captain of the winning club, in this case Alexia Putellas, who received it from Queen Letizia. “I guess it’s the protocol, that it goes like this everywhere, and that’s it,” Salma later said in the mixed zone, where she also expressed her wishes for the procedure to change.
After the controversy last year in Mérida in the Super Cup, a different competition but also organized by the federation, it published a statement to try to clarify the situation: “In accordance with the RFEF award protocols, and taking into account both the high number of institutional representation, as well as the infrastructure for access to the box from the stadium lawn, the protocol department decided to activate the delivery ceremony in the box in the same way that it is carried out in the Copa del Rey: delivery of the Cup to the captain of the champion team and presentation of medals to the winning team on the grass/locker room.”
Mariona Caldentey, chosen best player of the match after scoring two goals and giving two assists, also showed her surprise at the beginning with the RFEF procedure. “In Mérida we picked them up and put them on ourselves, and today Marçal, our delegate, gave them to us. I don’t know how it was done last year, but we laughed a little,” he said at the press conference. Later, in the mixed zone, when they told her that it was a matter of protocol, she added: “They were just telling me that in the men’s Copa del Rey the protocol is the same. “This is how it is organized, I don’t know what to tell you.”
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