Isco has hit out at suggestions that he refused to warm up during Saturday’s El Clasico.
Real Madrid fell to a 3-0 defeat to arch-rivals Barcelona at the Bernabeu in a result which leaves Zinedine Zidane’s side nine points behind the league leaders as they go into their Christmas break.
Luis Suarez opened the scoring shortly after half-time before Real’s Dani Carvajal saw red for a handball on the goalline. Lionel Messi converted the resultant penalty prior to setting up a third for Barca in the dying moments.
Good save, to be fair https://t.co/sTIfddgAN3
— FootballJOE (@FootballJOE) December 23, 2017
In danger of allowing Barcelona to run riot, Zidane decided to bring on a defender in the form of Nacho Fernandez, who replaced Karim Benzema.
Five minutes later, Marco Asensio and Gareth Bale entered the fray but Isco, one of the most creative players at Zizou’s disposal, remained on the bench, much to the surprise of the vast majority of supporters.
A rumour was quickly started by Spanish outlet AS which stated that the midfielder had refused to go through his warm-up.
SER: Isco se negó a seguir calentado cuando salió Nacho https://t.co/JMvVvI0Sj7 #ElClásico pic.twitter.com/0LnJ2RDEpT
— Diario AS (@diarioas) December 23, 2017
“Isco refused to carry on warming up after Nacho went on,” a tweet from the publication’s Twitter account read.
And while Isco may have cut a frustrated figure on the Real bench, he has wholeheartedly denied the report from AS, claiming that he already knew both Bale and Asensio were coming on so felt that there was no need to continue warming up.
“Stop spreading shit,” Isco responded. “Two of my teammates were already on their way in… I didn’t know that we were allowed to make four changes.”
Dejar de meter mierda que ya iban a salir mis otros dos compañeros… no sabÃa yo que sé podÃan hacer 4 cambios https://t.co/CFnYgNZcbM
— ISCO ALARCON (@isco_alarcon) December 23, 2017
