FC Barcelona suspends tribute to World Cup winning players

FC Barcelona has decided to suspend the tribute to their own World Cup winning players, which was scheduled to take place during their first home game of the season on Thursday night against Athletic Club.

The club called off the ceremony after the police violence against a Barça fan who was carrying a pro-independence flag during the club's season opener away to Elche.

Pro-independence organizations Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural have called for the Camp Nou to be filled with estelada flags on Thursday, and the former plans to hand out 10,000 such flags outside the Camp Nou before the game.

The Catalan National Assembly also criticized the tribute to the "oppressors' national team."

FC Barcelona president ​​Joan Laporta argued that the homage to the World Cup winning players will not be held because it is not "the most appropriate" context to hold such a ceremony. 

"We have communicated this to the Spanish Federation and they understand it," Laporta said, adding that "football must serve to unite and not to generate certain confrontations."

The planned celebration came from a proposal from the Spanish Football Federation, Laporta explained.

The president instead pointed out that Thursday will see an "act of exaltation of the estelada" in the match, adding that the independence flag must be respected because "it expresses the yearning for freedom and the will to be free of many Barça fans and Catalans."

Laporta condemned "the disproportionate and violent action" of the National Police officers who attacked a Barça fan outside Elche's ground for carrying a pro-independence flag before Sunday's match in Elche.

"Barça asks and trusts that this police action, the images of which horrifying, will have its punishment and the corresponding sanctions." 

"It will serve so that the estelada will no longer be stigmatized by the state's security and public order forces," he concluded.