{"id":934833,"date":"2026-10-20T10:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/934833\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T10:42:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:42:16","slug":"for-the-sake-of-football-viral-ref-cam-footage-reveals-hector-bellerins-cheeky-plea-for-giovani-lo-celso-wonder-strike-to-stand-against-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/934833\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;For the sake of football&#8217; &#8211; Viral ref-cam footage reveals Hector Bellerin&#8217;s cheeky plea for Giovani Lo Celso wonder-strike to stand against Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As Bengoetxea moved to calm the situation by stating &#8220;We&#8217;re going to check it&#8221; before consulting the VAR room, Pedri pressed his case further: &#8220;Yes, it is a handball. Cucho makes a deliberate movement to bring the ball under control with his hand.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The referee stood by his on-field call by responding &#8220;For me, he has it in a natural position&#8221;, prompting Fermin Lopez, Karim Adeyemi and Rodri to join the appeals as the latter insisted: &#8220;It&#8217;s very clear.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>With Pedri continuing to demand that the goal be chalked off, Bellerin walked over to the official to offer a cheeky defence of his team-mate&#8217;s finish: &#8220;Just for the sake of the goal he scored, it should be allowed to stand. For the sake of football.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for Betis, VAR ultimately disallowed the strike. After the restart, Gabriel Jesus converted a Yamal cross to make it 3-1, and although Abde Ezzalzouli briefly reduced the deficit, Facundo Bernal was sent off moments later for moving his head towards Yamal before substitute Eric Garcia and Dani Olmo sealed a 5-2 victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Bengoetxea moved to calm the situation by stating &#8220;We&#8217;re going to check it&#8221; before consulting the VAR&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":934834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,937,596,501563,41288,138962,80436,501564,85],"class_list":["post-934833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barcelona","tag-football","tag-h-bellerin","tag-laliga","tag-pedri","tag-real-betis","tag-real-betis-vs-barcelona","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/934834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}