Referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz will not be in action this weekend after dishing out a flurry of cards in Barcelona’s 1-1 draw with Espanyol last Saturday.
The Spaniard was widely criticised for his performance in a fiery Catalan derby on New Year’s Eve, where he sent Jordi Alba and Vinicius Souza off and booked another 11 players along with Barca head coach Xavi.
Meanwhile, a VAR review would later save another Espanyol player,Leandro Cabrera after he was initially shown a red card for an apparent stamp on Robert Lewandowski.
Having been dismissed for two bookable offences, Barcelona defender Alba said Lahoz had forgotten about his first yellow card when he issued a second for dissent.
Lahoz, who was once again on duty on Wednesday sent Sevilla boss Jorge Sampaoli to the stands just 18 minutes into their 5-0 Copa del Rey win over Linares.
On Thursday, the Spanish Football Federation released a list of refereeing appointments for the 16th round of fixtures of the LaLiga season, with Lahoz conspicuous by his absence.
It would be recalled that the arbiter was in charge of the World Cup quarter final match between Argentina and Netherlands where he dolled out 15 yellow cards.
Theinformant247
