“I winked”: the incredible reason why referee Baliño went to VAR to correct Defensa y Justicia’s penalty against Boca

The penalty awarded by VAR to Defensa y Justicia sparked controversy during and after the Bombonera match. According to what defender Alexis Soto told journalists in the locker room, referee Jorge Baliño confirmed that the penalty was changed due to a gesture (wink) that the defender made to Nicolás Fernández.

“It was a clear penalty. They had confirmed it. But later Baliño told me that they went to check because they saw the wink I gave them while I was fucking Uvita Fernández. That’s why they took away the penalty. Imagine that I won’t turn a blind eye to myself when I know that at the Bombonera there are thousands of cameras filming everything,” Soto said. It is clarified: the wink when the lefty was on the ground was clearly observed in one of the repetitions.

“From my point of view I had no doubts, it was a penalty. On the pitch it seemed to me that Blondel was reckless on Soto’s foot. Later, with the VAR images, I saw that this was not the case and that the player collided with his own leg, “explained Baliño. As for the wink, he made no mention of it.

The controversial play of the match occurred at the end of the opening phase. Baliño took a penalty for Blondel’s foul on Soto. Contact, if it existed, was minimal. In one repetition it looked like a penalty, in another it didn’t. But the curious thing is that after many minutes Baliño received the OK from VAR and revalidated the penalty. Togni leaves the ball to Uvita Fernández and La Bombonera explodes with a deafening “dale Boca”.

It was an electrifying moment; The intention was to unnerve the Falcon’s attacker. There were a couple of seconds of suspense and the definition was unexpected: Pablo Dóvalo called Baliño for review, who removed the sanction. As La Bombonera was once said to have saved a penalty in a 2016 match against Atlético de Rafaela, he could be said to have pushed for VAR to call the referee yesterday.

Later, of course, it became known: from Ezeiza they had seen Soto’s wink at Uvita. And they concluded that he was faking it. “It was an obvious penalty that VAR didn’t charge. But I think the equalizer was fair,” concluded Uvita Fernández.