Barcelona should know: a man is so much more than his washbag...

We need to talk about washbags – what they signify, or what people are threatening, in these judgemental times, to make them signify. Because it’s alarming. By my washbag you shall know me? Is this where we are now?

We are having to consider these things because of the Catalan media and the representatives of Barcelona football club who have loudly protested the referee’s handling of last Tuesday’s game against Inter Milan.

Now, the mile-wide irony of Barcelona complaining about ­unfavourable decisions in the second leg of a Champions League semi-final will, of course, bring a weary smile to the lips of anyone old enough to remember Chelsea vs Barça in 2009 ­­– or, as it has gone down in history: The Night of a Thousand Ungiven Pens.

Here, though, our focus is on words spoken on Tuesday night by Barcelona’s Pedri: “It’s not the first time this has happened to us with this referee. Uefa should look at it.”

Or maybe Uefa could look at the intimidatory pile-ons now ­routinely organised for referees by clubs (Real Madrid leading the way) who ­haven’t quite got what they wanted. Meanwhile, media outlets in Spain have branded Tuesday’s ref – Szymon Marciniak of Poland – as a known ‘Madridista’ with an anti-Barça agenda.

And the clinching evidence for this bias? A video clip, first circulated last year, in which Marciniak is standing beside a table on which sits a Real Madrid-branded washbag.

OK, so let’s assume the washbag was/is Marciniak’s – which is a stretch, by the way, because the only thing the video clip definitively ­establishes is that Marciniak was once in the same dressing room as a Real Madrid washbag. And you would have to say that, in his particular line of work, this was hardly shocking.

But let’s say this one actually was Marciniak’s and actually contained his Gillette Mach3 Turbo razor. What could we even then legitimately infer? That he bought it? Perhaps – and that was arguably incautious of him. But what if it was given to him by a slightly tiresome friend in the spirit of banter? And maybe, after ­unwrapping it, Marciniak grinned as gamely as he could, only to look at it later and think: “You know what would fit in there? My shower gel...”

There are interpretations, is all I’m saying. And I speak with some ­personal investment here. At any point over the last 20 years, I could have been pictured in the ­vicinity of a Porsche-branded washbag.

You’d have had to examine the ­picture even more closely than ­people examined the Marciniak video to expose this detail, because the only branding is on a small metal tag. But there it is. And what’s more, it’s ­undeniably mine – one of a batch gifted as blandishments to ­journalists by Porsche at a car launch I attended in another life. It was a bribe, in other words. A soft one, but still a bribe. What can I tell you? Such was the world of car PR.

But did that washbag erode my integrity, then or at any point since? Hell no. Look, I’m long past going after people for their taste in cars and believe that people should drive whatever makes them happy, ­assuming they even drive to be made happy, which most people don’t.

Nevertheless, speaking entirely for myself, the prevalent image of Porsche products as vulgar bankers’ chariots is just a bit too on the nose for my taste. And has the best part of two decades of going on holiday with a Porsche-branded washbag caused me to deviate from that view? Not a fraction. Nor from the opinion that the Porsche Cayenne, though unquestionably offering generous boot space and robust ­performance both on and off the road, is one of the most ­repulsive cars ever manufactured.

So what I’m saying is that a ­person can plausibly own and operate a branded washbag while remaining capable of the kind of independent thought which might be necessary while, for instance, judging his ­neighbours’ car choices or ­refereeing a Champions League semi-final second leg between Inter Milan and Barcelona. Because we are so much more than our washbags – Marciniak, me, all of us. We need to insist on that.

Photograph by Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images