Barcelona's Jeremy Mathieu has said that social media posts from Paris Saint-Germain players fuelled the La Liga giants' miraculous Champions League comeback.
Following PSG's stunning 4-0 first-leg win, a number of PSG players and their loved ones took to social media to mark the victory. Notably, the French champions' midfielder Adrien Rabiot posted on Instagram a picture of himself holding up four fingers while teammate Layvin Kurzawa makes the "V for Victory" sign in the background.
The pair both featured at the Camp Nou on Tuesday as Barcelona became the first club ever to overturn such a deficit with a breathtaking 6-1 second-leg triumph.
Speaking to former Barcelona midfielder Christophe Dugarry on RMC, Mathieu admitted the PSG pair's over-confidence had played into the Catalan club's hands.
"They're young and I think they lacked humility," the former France international, who watched the game from the Camp Nou stands, said.
"In football, things change quickly, and it came back to haunt them. You have to wait for the end of both 90-minute matches. There wasn't only them. You can be happy to win 4-0, but you have to stay humble. A little message is fine, but there is still a second leg. You mustn't get carried away,
"When you have gone through to the next round, you can put out a few little things, but for me it was a lack of respect. I can tell you the dressing room was very angry about that.
"Even the wives of the players, such as Marquinhos', who put a photo of her showing four fingers with her dog. Those are the little things that really annoyed the dressing room and that's why we really, really wanted to pull off the 'remontada' [comeback]"
Mathieu was caught up in controversy himself after the game following teammate Javier Mascherano's Instagram post that showed the former Toulouse and Valencia man with his middle finger raised amid his jubilant teammates.
"It was just a silly little thing," Mathieu explained. "It was Mascherano's mobile phone, he posted the wrong photo. If you look at those of [Luis] Suarez and [Ivan] Rakitic, they put the same one and I don't have my middle finger raised.
"Mascherano made a mistake, we talked about it this morning, and I told him to look when he posts something, because I knew it would kick up a fuss. I don't care much about the consequences, it was our daft little thing at the start, and after that we put a proper photo where we just showed the six."