Florentino attacks the referee renewal that he himself promoted

BarcelonaDean 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.

Xabi Alonso, Real Madrid's manager, had already expressed his displeasure and admitted that he hadn't been convinced by the referee's explanations. Just minutes later, Real Madrid TV announced that the club was preparing a report to send to FIFA, outlining all the errors it believes have harmed Real Madrid's interests during the 2024/25 season and the four matchdays of the current campaign.

Florentino, the main promoter of the Changes that have been made to the CTA this summer, has launched a missile against the refereeing community from the very start, despite the fact that Madrid has won all of its La Liga matches and that most of the controversial refereeing decisions have gone in its favor. Without going any further, they beat Osasuna thanks to a dubious penalty on Mbappé and set the stage for victory at Oviedo after the referee deemed Tchouaméni had not committed a foul at the start of the play. As for Arda Güler's disallowed goal against Mallorca, despite generating controversy at the Bernabéu, there was no room for debate from the referee's point of view.

The referees' association is considering making a move.

This summer, professional referees decided to form an association to legally defend themselves against any person or entity that might violate their honor. The decision was prompted by Real Madrid's statement after losing at Espanyol, in which they harshly criticized the refereeing establishment and demanded changes that have now been made.

The referees opted for a truce to give the new leaders room to maneuver, but Florentino's declaration of intent has set off alarm bells within the group, which is aware that it will have to act if it doesn't want to be trampled on again. The controversy has come too early, right at the start of the competition, and they are aware that if they don't take action, the league could drag on.

A discredited VAR team

One of the great aspirations of the League and the Spanish Federation was the creation of a team of VAR referees who would specialize in this function without stepping on the pitch. Fran Soto, the new president of the CTA, had to take on the task and recruited 15 referees to cover all the matches in the First and Second Division.

The main handicap is that those chosen were referees who had recently retired or been relegated. Those most highly regarded by UEFA—Juan Martínez Munuera, Alejandro Hernández Hernández, and Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea—were forced to resign their positions in the VAR room and currently limit themselves to acting as VAR assistants.

The new head of video refereeing, Eduardo Prieto Iglesias, has given explicit instructions to drastically reduce the use of VAR, which would mean allowing intervention only in clear and obvious errors. The result is that the number of reviews has been cut in half compared to the previous three seasons, but the controversy has continued to grow.