Conspiracy of Silence

Perhaps Mourinho went too far by suggesting that there's some sort of conspiracy at work to smooth Barcelona's path to the Champions League Final, but in essence he's right that Barcelona are favoured by referees.  It's not exactly rocket science.  Referees don't, I assume, live in a bubble.  It is often noted in papers how referees in this country are up in arms about some of Sir Alex's more angry comments on certain referees and we can see how this affects the referees in our games - how few penalties this season?  Chelsea? So, with all the world fawning over "the most beautiful team to ever play the game" is it not highly likely that this has an effect on the refereeing fraternity?  That when they referee Barcelona they are likely to assume that Barca are trying to play the beautiful game and that the opposition are trying to stop them, by fair means or foul, that as they are the ones playing the beautiful game that their tackles are not malicious.  You could see it in the decisions made against Real Madrid.  You can see it as much in the way Barcelona react to tackles against them, it as if they are not allowed, even the Barcelona players believe the hype: "Don't you know who we how?  How dare you tackle us?!"  The way they surround the referee demanding decisions is borne of the sense of the entitlement they think their beautiful football brings them.  

You see it sometimes with Arsenal, they think they should get everything, they think they can do no wrong, that other teams should just let them pass the ball through them.  Its an affront to decency when teams tackle them.  And similarly in the commentary and subsequent reaction to the Real-Barcelona game, it's apparently an affront to the football gods that Mourinho should set his team up to try and defend against Barcelona.  He should have just gone gung-ho and let his defence be ripped to shreds.  And that he didn't is apparently why he should never be Man Utd manager, according to Henry Winter.  That's a debate for another day, a debate I'm still not sure which side I'm on, except to say that it would take some personality to take over from the legend of Sir Alex.

One other point to make is that when big teams play each other the referee can not win simply because big teams are used to getting the decisions.  As pointed out earlier, referees don't referee in a bubble, they know there will be a bigger outcry if they get decisions wrong against the bigger teams, and so in games where a big club is a up against a small club the big club will generally get the decisions (that is generally portrayed as man Utd getting all the decisions is just something we have to live with).  When big club plays big club someone's going to lose out.  Hence the shock, the over the top reactions to losing a big game on a bad decision. Small clubs are used to it.  Big clubs aren't.  And Mourhino, who seems to like to be able to control every aspect of games, certainly isn't.  But it doesn't need the invisible hand of conspiracy to give barca the advantage, that comes naturally.