István Kovács's controversial performance at the Camp Nou opened a can of worms. Hansi Flick complained after the match about the refereeing errors that, according to the German coach, had conditioned the match, and Barça filed a formal complaint with UEFA to denounce that the Romanian referee's decisions "influenced the development and the outcome of the match". In this scenario of maximum tension, Roberto Rosetti, head of European refereeing, was obliged to bet on a safe bet for the return leg at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano. When it comes to saving the furniture, there are 2 names on the table: the Frenchman Clément Turpin and the Pole Szymon Marciniak. The latter, however, officiated the Inter Milan-Barça Champions League semi-final last season and his performance caused a lot of controversy. Therefore, the choice was practically reduced to a single name: Turpin, who, curiously, had already refereed the first leg of the same tie between the Catalans and the Lombards at Montjuïc, which ended 3-3.

The fifth duel of the season between Barça and Atlètic de Madrid was the first in European competition and, therefore, had to go through the sieve of a foreign official. The Italian Roberto Rosetti, head of UEFA's refereeing, aware of the difficulty of the match, opted for one of his best cards: István Kovács. The Romanian, 41 years old, arrived with the experience of having recently refereed a Champions League final between Inter Milan and PSG and with the intention of applying his style guide: whistle few fouls, allow the game to flow, and delay the first card until exhaustion. However, the criteria applied did not sustain control of a high-demand match.

The Canary Islands referee Juan Luis Pulido Santana has sparked a new controversy following statements made on the Rogue Cast podcast, in which he harshly criticized former Catalan referee Xavier Estrada Fernández, whom he described as "a wretch" and "a sinister character." But the issue isn't just the insult itself, but the underlying message. During the interview, Pulido explicitly introduced a particularly sensitive element: Estrada's political ideology: "Now he's playing the nationalist, a total Catalan, but he was certainly getting paid by the Spanish Football Federation," he stated. He then added a highly symbolic remark: "When he officiated the Copa del Rey final, he had to bow down to the national anthem."

The Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) is considering extending César Soto Grado's contract for another season. This decision was not in the initial plans of the current refereeing leadership, but they are forced into it due to the poor performance of the refereeing staff this season.

The referees are at an impasse. Controversies are piling up, and the leaders of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) don't know how to resolve this untenable situation as the final stretch of the season begins. Teams' complaints focus on the use of VAR. In this regard, Barça sent a letter to the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) expressing their dissatisfaction with the criteria being applied. Interestingly, the Blaugrana They felt wronged again in GironaFor example, the 2-1 home goal was allowed despite a previous foul on Kounde, and the penalty missed by Lamine Yamal wasn't retaken even though Bryan Gil, who influenced the play, entered the area prematurely. The truth is that the VAR officials are following the instructions of their head, Eduardo Prieto Iglesias, to the letter, who asks them to minimize VAR intervention. They received the following directive: "We prefer that you make a mistake so we don't have to intervene when necessary, rather than sending a colleague to the monitor when they shouldn't." This request has influenced the decision-making process and led the VAR officials to prioritize justifying the on-field referee's decision over correcting the error. The creation of the specific VAR unit clips the wings of elite referees.

The level of the VAR officials also significantly affects the quality of decisions, since, starting this season, on-field referees can no longer lead the VAR team. Rafael Louzán, president of the RFEF (Royal Spanish Football Federation), tasked the CTA (Technical Committee of Referees) with creating a specific VAR team made up of referees dedicated exclusively to that role. The team, currently 16 members, covers matches in the First and Second Divisions. At the same time, they prohibited the main referees from acting as VAR officials, and this has significantly disadvantaged international referees like Martínez Munuera and De Burgos Bengoetxea. The lack of consistent experience in the Spanish league has caused them to lose competitive edge compared to other European VAR officials, to the point that only Hernández Hernández remains a viable option to join Del Cerro at the World Cup. The impact is also noticeable domestically, where inconsistencies arise that affect decision-making. It happened in the Real Madrid - Real Sociedad and Girona - Barça matches, where the VAR referee had experience mainly in the Second Division, while the AVAR was an international referee. Financially, the difference between the two positions is also substantial: a VAR receives €2,500 per match, and their assistant just over €1,000.

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The disallowed goal by Lamine Yamal has reopened the debate about the reliability of the SAOT system, the semi-automatic offside technology that determines whether a player is in an illegal position. This tool has been implemented in La Liga since the 2024-25 season and represents a significant improvement over the previous system, in which referees manually drew the lines. The system is called semi-automatic because it requires human intervention to resolve the play. The role of the VAR official is to determine the exact moment when the striker's teammate last touches the ball. From there, the program calculates whether the position is legal. In certain situations, the referee can choose between one or two options. framesSince slow-motion images make it difficult to establish with absolute precision when the ball last touches the player's foot, referees never know in advance how the play will unfold. To expedite the process and increase reliability, the ball would need to incorporate an official chip that would allow the exact moment of the last touch to be determined. However, La Liga rejected this option for economic reasons, as well as the implementation of a clock that alerts the referee when the ball has completely crossed the goal line in cases of phantom goals. A headache for the CTA (Technical Committee of Referees).

Hawk-Eye, the company responsible for the semi-automatic offside system, provides the broadcast team with a graphic representation to justify the VAR decision. The problem is that the shortcomings of this simulation raise more questions than answers: the mannequins are all the same height, wear the same shoes, and lack features like hair, which detracts from the image's realism. One of the most surreal representations occurred during last season's Real Sociedad-Barcelona match, when Robert Lewandowski's disproportionately large foot was shown to justify an offside call. This Sunday, also at Anoeta, an image was circulated showing Lamine Yamal perfectly aligned with the defender, but a second test had to be sent out, revealing that part of his heel was slightly forward.

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Víctor García Verdura will make history, becoming the first Catalan to referee a Barça-Espanyol derby in La Liga. This unconventional appointment will test the abilities of the referee from Maresme and has stirred controversy, both among his colleagues and within the Espanyol camp, whose manager has made their displeasure with the decision clear. García Verdura was born 31 years ago in Sant Iscle de Vallalta and his career has been meteoric. At 22, he debuted in Segunda B and five seasons later was promoted to the second tier of Spanish football. Once there, he only needed two seasons in professional football to captivate the directors of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) thanks to a refereeing style that perfectly suits the profile currently sought: discreet, low-profile referees who prefer to prevent conflicts and remain inconspicuous.

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Jesús Gil Manzano's decline is official: FIFA has ruled him out of the 2026 World Cup. Pierluigi Collina has shortlisted 16 European referees, and the absence of the referee from Extremadura has been one of the biggest surprises of the list. Among the candidates are recognizable names such as Szymon Marciniak, Clément Turpin, Istvan Kovacs, and José María Sánchez Martínez, the only Spanish representative. The FIFA decision is a low blow for Gil Manzano, who sees his last chance to officiate a World Cup slip away. The referee from San Benito had everything in his favor after refereeing at the Qatar World Cup, but since then he has had a string of very poor performances that have undermined his international reputation. The Qatar World Cup, a launching pad for Gil Manzano

In fact, the Qatar World Cup was a turning point for Spanish refereeing. FIFA had shortlisted Jesús Gil Manzano, Antonio Mateu Lahoz, and Carlos del Cerro Grande for the tournament, and the National Referees Committee (CTA) decided to eliminate the age limit of 45 years to keep the chances of the more veteran referees alive. Ultimately, Pierluigi Collina, responsible for selecting the referees, chose Mateu. The Valencian referee delivered strong performances until the quarterfinals, where he lost control of the Argentina-Netherlands match, showing 15 cards, a record for a single World Cup game. Once the 2022-23 season ended, Mateu and Del Cerro retired, paving the way for Gil Manzano, who remained the sole Spanish representative in the elite group, UEFA's top tier. He was 38 years old at the time and had extensive international experience: he had officiated at Euro 2016 as the fourth official and had participated in the 2021 Copa América as a European representative. Looking ahead to the 2026 World Cup, FIFA considered no other option than Gil Manzano, since the alternatives – Hernández Hernández and Sánchez Martínez – were in the First Division, an international second tier, and it was difficult to predict whether they would be able to improve sufficiently. A collection of high-profile controversies

Gil Manzano's precipitous decline is difficult to explain, considering he debuted in La Liga in 2012 and, therefore, his extensive experience should have given him a certain level of refereeing maturity. One of the first notable controversies occurred on matchday 37 of the 2022-23 season. He officiated a Valencia-Espanyol match, and a string of poor decisions condemned the Catalan club to relegation. That same season, he also became a central figure in an Osasuna-Barcelona match, sending off Lewandowski and noting that he had touched his nose in protest, which resulted in an additional two-match suspension for the Polish striker.

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The Madrid derby from a few days ago has gone down in history as the first match in which a referee from the same city as the teams involved was appointed. The VOR room was led by Carlos del Cerro Grande, born in Madrid, who shared the role with Valentín Pizarro, also a resident of the capital. A situation hitherto unprecedented but one that will become increasingly common.

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Dean Huijsen's sending-off at Anoeta has opened a can of worms. It was in the 30th minute of the match when the Real Madrid defender grabbed Oyarzábal and knocked him to the ground. Jesús Gil Manzano put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the red card. A highly controversial decision, as the rules establish that, to consider an action as an obvious goalscoring opportunity, several factors must be considered: the number and position of defenders, the distance of the foul from the goal, the likelihood of ball control, and the direction of play. In this case, most of these conditions were not met. However, the VAR decided not to intervene and ended up upholding Gil Manzano's error.

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Only three matchdays have been played, and La Liga has already accumulated a string of refereeing controversies. The list is extensive: Ferran Torres' goal against Mallorca with an opponent lying on the ground, Balde's handball at the Ciudad de Valencia, the penalty on Mbappé at the Bernabéu, Arda Güler's handball, the penalty on Lamine Yamal in Vallecas, or the goal awarded to Giuliano Simeone even though the offside player was in VAR's position in 2018. This has fallen like a bombshell within the Spanish Federation, which sees how the changes implemented to the Technical Committee of Referees before the start of this season are not yielding the expected results.

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The Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and the Professional Football League (LFP) have tasked the newly appointed president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), Fran Soto Balirac, with leading a major refereeing revolution and overhauling the system from top to bottom. One of the Galician leader's main goals revolves around the humanization of the group, and along these lines, he has sought to reformulate the nomenclature of referees, mentioning first names and eliminating second surnames.

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La Liga announced that referee appointments will be published one day before the match. This measure was agreed upon with the Spanish Football Federation (FA) with the aim of reducing the pressure on referees from clubs, especially Real Madrid. The referees had expressed their rejection of the club's videos and, in line with this, have created their own association to prosecute any entity that attacks their honor. This new approach has been welcomed by the group after a few weeks in which they have been stupefied by the avalanche of developments surrounding the Referees Committee.

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Low-cost VAR has arrived in Spanish football. The RFEF has announced that the Spanish First Federation will have this new video refereeing system this season after a flood of complaints from teams in the division. Thus, Club Nàstic de Tarragona, CE Sabadell, and CE Europa will debut this technology when the competition begins.

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The new Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) is beginning to take shape. Fran Soto Balirac, the new president, has presented his team's top brass on social media. The Galician lawyer is committed to a cross-functional organizational structure that moves away from the hierarchical model of his predecessor, Luis Medina Cantalejo. The CTA leader has announced the six people who will be tasked with launching the project and has also determined their roles. The two most important positions will be David Fernández Borbalán and Eduardo Prieto Iglesias.

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A 45-year-old lawyer based in Vigo will be responsible for football referees after the Spanish Football Federation Rafael Louzán dismissed the refereeing leadership headed by Luis Medina Cantalejo and Carlos Cloz Gómez a few days ago. Fran Soto Balirac, who has never refereed in Spanish professional football, will be the new president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), a group that is at the center of attention whenever the football ball rolls and which Florentino Pérez has fought to turn in his interests for years.

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The Spanish Federation (RFEF) has published the referee lists certifying the promotions and relegations of national referees. This year's movements have had a highly political component, given that the president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), Luis Medina Cantalejo, has been dismissed from his duties.

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The Spanish Football Federation and La Liga have been working together for months on revamping the refereeing structure.

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The 2024-25 season was a grueling one for Spanish referees. The group has had to endure off-field incidents that have damaged the referees' reputation, in addition to rampant animosity. The breeding ground for this unsustainable situation comes from many sources: clubs have used social media to irresponsibly attack referees, Real Madrid Television has taken its assessments of referees to the extreme (even more), and even the president of the Technical Committee of Referees, Luis Medina Cantal, has also been criticized. refrigerators on a television program. If you add to all this a banner with the image of Carlos del Cerro Grande with a goal pointed at his head, the picture is worrying.

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The spectacular Liga derby It was full of controversial plays that influenced, and influenced, the outcome of the match. VAR, led by Valencian Martínez Munuera, became Alejandro Hernández Hernández's worst enemy.

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