Robin van Persie opens up about *that* red card for Arsenal against Barcelona

Robin van Persie has hit out at his controversial sending off at the Nou Camp in 2011.

Former Arsenal striker Robin van Persie has spoken out about *that* ridiculous red card he was shown at the Nou Camp back in 2011.

Arsenal fans will still look back on that night with anger, with Barcelona going on to win 3-1 and progress 4-3 on aggregate despite a fine performance from the Gunners over the two legs of that Champions League tie.

Goals from Van Persie and Andrey Arshavin gave us that famous 2-1 win at the Emirates Stadium in the first leg, but Van Persie was shown an extremely harsh red card in the return leg.

You may remember the Dutchman was already on a yellow card, and was shown a second yellow for the crime of kicking the ball away pretty much a second after the referee blew his whistle to stop play.

RVP is clearly still annoyed by it, as he revealed in a question-and-answer session with fans on Twitter today…

Arsenal had equalised through a Sergio Busquets own goal moments before that red card, so who knows how different things might have been if we’d played the rest of the game with eleven men?

8 Comments

  1. Football is a cruel game.

    Imagine the graft and the grit that Arsenal displayed that day. All that hard work and courage consigned to the dust bin of history, just because a bent ref thinks Barca should be given a let off.

    Imagine what could have been if we finished the game with eleven men. Barcelona was pi*sing in their pants already. The prospects of losing was clearly staring them in the face.

    Wenger would probably have been spared the eternal ignominious and the disdain of his haters today. It was not to be…

    One if those night that I knew that justice would never be served on the field of play because there are powers outside the field of play that influence what happens on the field of play.

  2. Who cares anymore F/O RVP your no longer a legend at AFC. maybe the little boy in you will bring you back to AFC one day, but I will never forgive you.

    1. You cannot deny RVP’s place in Arsenal’s history whether you liked the way he left or not. I mean, as a banker, doctor, IT expert, HR person, etc, you can change jobs so what’s the difference here? Especially when the board weren’t backing Wenger financially?

  3. I believe the result that night in Camp Nou must have later contributed to convincing RVP that he needs to leave Arsenal. We were having so much ‘ill-luck’ and it was clear that we were battling against the windmill, and would never win a title with so much angst against the club.

    Imagine that with all his brilliant effort and goal scoring feats, Man U still won the title. The next year that he joined them, the difference between us and them winning the title was RVP. I firmly believe that had he stayed with us one more year, we would be EPL Champions instead of Man U.

    But then, again, it never happened that way.

    Imagine again if we were Champions that year. Would Arsene Wenger be seen the same way he now is?

    These are parts of history made by things happening off the field of play, governing the results of matches.

    It’s not all decided on that green patch of Earth…

      1. Really? OK, Ronaldo has been sent off 11 times, that is more than Vieira, Duncan Ferguson, Vinnie Jones, even Joey Barton. Hardly untouchable. Messi has been sent off twice, both for Argentina so while low compared to Ronaldo, still not untouchable.

  4. There must be some players from the 1920s who had red cards too, since we are now supposed to be minutely interested in ancient history! Who cares a tinkers damn about RVP IN 2011! NOT ME AND I DOUBT HARDLY ANYONE ELSE EITHER. YOU ARE REALLY SCRAPING THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL FOR AN ARTICLE NOW! Frankly I’d rather discuss the Romans, if we are now into ancient history! And yes MARTIN, I KNOW YOU DID NOT WRITE THIS BUT YOU SURELY DID NOT NEED TO PUBLISH THIS IRRELEVANT TRIPE!

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