Once again refereeing trouble at Real Madrid: the Champions League winner has protested against refereeing performance in a four-page letter to the Spanish Football Association.
The four-page letter, which Real Madrid presented on its website on Monday evening and at the same time sent to the Spanish Football Association and its president Rafael Louzan Abal, is titled “Formal protest against the refereeing system”.
The background to the renewed flare-up of the Whites’ private feud with the Spanish referees is the foul by Espanyol defender Carlos Romero against Kylian Mbappé in the league game last Saturday. Romero only saw yellow instead of red after a nasty sliding tackle against Mbappé in the middle of the second half – and then scored the winning goal to make it 1-0 shortly before the end. It was the first league defeat for the league leaders in two months.
After the game, Real had opened its club website with a video of the foul – titled “The worldwide scandal continues”. The club has already caused a stir in the past with video clips of what it considers to be wrong refereeing decisions against it. The Spanish sports daily Marca, for example, views the letter that has now been sent as a “final frontal attack” on Spanish refereeing.
“The events that occurred in this game went beyond any scope for human error or the referee’s scope for interpretation,” the statement said, writing of a ‘scandalous performance by the VAR referee’ who did not intervene after Romero was shown the yellow card by referee Alejandro Muniz Ruiz.
This decision, Real continues, “represents the culmination of a completely discredited refereeing system in which decisions against Real Madrid have reached a level of manipulation and distortion of the competition that can no longer be ignored. The two most serious refereeing decisions in this game have once again highlighted the double standards by which Real Madrid are judged.”
In addition to the missed sending off, Real also criticize the fact that a goal from Vinicius Jr. in the middle of the first half was disallowed because Mbappé had pushed Espanyol’s Pol Lozano while the goal was being scored. Real is now demanding that the Spanish Football Federation “immediately release the VAR audios”, i.e. the communication between the referee and the VAR, for both scenes.
“The Spanish refereeing system is completely flawed and structurally designed to protect itself and (…) maintain a system that has already been described as fraudulent by the judiciary itself,” the letter said. “The refereeing system must be completely overhauled (…) and effective control mechanisms must be put in place to prevent a recurrence of the scenario that has brought Spanish football into such disrepute.”
