Barcelona midfielder Rodri says he has apologised to the entire Valencia squad after television cameras appeared to catch him describing the La Liga strugglers as “very weak”.<\/p>\n
Rodri reportedly made the comment to Barcelona team-mates Pau Cubarsi and Raphinha while sitting on the bench after being substituted during his side’s 5-0 league win against Valencia on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The result at Mestella Stadium left Valencia bottom of the table with no wins in their first four matches.<\/p>\n
Though the footage has no audio, broadcaster Movistar claimed they lip-read the 30-year-old former Manchester City player saying: “They’re really weak. They haven’t got past the halfway line.”<\/p>\n
Fans and sections of the Spanish media accused Rodri, who won the golden ball as Spain won the 2026 World Cup, of being disrespectful.<\/p>\n
“I apologised to my friend and colleague Jose Gaya [Spain defender and Valencia captain] and to the entire squad as well,” Rodri said after Barcelona’s 5-1 win against Feyenoord in the Champions League on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“I also want to make it clear that it was simply an expression of surprise – anyone watching the video can see that. <\/p>\n
“At no point did I intend to mock anyone or take a difficult moment for a team out of context. Quite the opposite – we all want Valencia to return to where it belongs in the league, it is one of the best clubs in the competition. I simply wanted to say that.<\/p>\n
“I would also add that it was a private conversation; I think we should all learn a bit more from this, as things really do get taken out of context sometimes. But at no point did I mean any disrespect. My apologies to Valencia.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona midfielder Rodri says he has apologised to the entire Valencia squad after television cameras appeared to catch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-842821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}