[ANALYSIS] Are Barcelona favoured by UEFA? Torres was the 30th player sent off against Catalans in UCL…10 more than any other club

Barcelona have one foot in the semi-finals of the 2015/16 UEFA Champions League after a hard-fought 2-1 win over Atletico Madrid on Tuesday.

Luis Suarez scored twice in the second half to rescue Barca from 1-0 down, but it was the red card shown to Atletico goalscorer Fernando Torres that seemed to change the game.

The Spanish striker picked up two yellow cards in quick succession and was sent off just 10 minutes after giving his side a 25th-minute lead at the Camp Nou, leaving his 10 remaining team-mates to fight off the advances of Lionel Messi and Co. for the majority of the game.

After the game, statistician MisterChip shared an interesting stat that confirmed what many rival fans have long suspected—opposition teams playing Barcelona have seen more red cards than against any other club in the history of the Champions League.

One user replied with “uefaLona,” a term coined to describe the perceived Barcelona bias within the continent’s governing body.

Of course, there are plenty of other perfectly legitimate explanations for why so many opposition players see red against the Catalans.

Since the conception of the Champions League in 1992, a large number of the game’s best attackers have played for Barcelona, from Romario, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o … all the way to the current supreme crop of Messi, Suarez and Neymar.

This could explain the large number of cards accrued by opposition players attempting to stop (fairly or otherwise) some of football’s trickiest customers.

But that’s unlikely to satisfy the conspiracy theorists, who have long suspected UEFA of favouring the boys from Barca.