BARCELONA
Ilkay Gündogan continues to cause controversy at Barcelona after Ballon d’Or photo rejection
The German, after his fiery choice of words post-Clásico, did not pose with his Barça teammates at the Ballon d’Or ceremony.
Gündogan continues to be the protagonist off the field for Barcelona.
The German already made headlines after the El Clásico loss when, in statements to LaLiga TV, he chose the moment to raise his voice and criticise the lack of anger shown by some of his teammates after the defeat against Real Madrid.
“I have to be honest”, he said after the loss thanks to two Bellingham goals, “not as much as I wish because I don’t want to say something wrong, but I was in the dressing room and of course people are disappointed, but especially after such a big game and a result that is so unnecessary, I wish for more frustration, more anger and more disappointment. This is a little bit the problem.”
‘I didn’t come here to lose this type of game’
“There has to be more emotion”, he continued, “especially when you lose and when you know you can perform better, do better in certain situations and you just don’t react. It transfers to the pitch at the end of the day. We need to make a huge step in that because otherwise Real Madrid or even Girona are going to run away. I didn’t come here to lose this type of game or to let a gap create.”
“There is also a responsibility for myself, as a more experienced player, to not allow the squad to just let things happen,” he concluded. “No, we need resistance.”
Gundogan refused to appear in Barça team photo
And then, last Monday, at the Ballon d’Or Gala held at the Du Chatelet theater in Paris, Gündogan’s attitude also caused eyebrows to raise, as he withdrew from the official photo of the Barcelona team before entering the ceremony.
Ilkay Gündogan, who came fourteenth in the Ballon d’Or voting, was one of the players who was part of the Barça squad trip to Paris, but he appeared not to be very fond of posing on the red carpet with the rest of the club officials and quickly left the scene. Both his colleagues Marc ter Stegen and Alejandro Balde, as well as the vice president Rafa Yuste, were somewhat surprised by Gündogan’s behaviour, although they did not publicly show it to be of any significance.