Tomás Guasch's Blistering Attack on La Liga Refereeing
Tomás Guasch has launched a blistering attack on La Liga refereeing after Real Madrid’s 1-0 defeat to Real Betis, accusing officials – and above all VAR – of acting “in bad faith” and systematically targeting the club.
Speaking on YouTube with content creator Ricardo Ramos Nera, in remarks later picked up by Defensa Central, the veteran Spanish journalist painted a picture of a league where every Real Madrid goal is treated with suspicion.
“With every Real goal that doesn't come from a shot from 40 metres, they replay the footage on VAR and look for an excuse to disallow it,” Guasch complained. “There must be someone whose only job is to follow the Madrid goals.”
He didn’t stop there. “They replay the footage. They rewind two or three times until they find that the player was in an offside position,” he continued. “I'm telling you they wouldn't disallow this goal if it were for another team. It goes on like that, replay after replay, until they finally find a pass in which the player was ahead.”
Fury over Espí’s disallowed header
Guasch’s anger crystallised around one moment: the offside call against Carlos Espí in the 87th minute at the Benito Villamarín.
The forward had powered in a superb header after receiving a pass from Vinícius on the right flank. On the pitch, referee Hernández Hernández pointed to the centre circle. Goal given. Up in the booth, Iglesias Villanueva and his VAR team started their check.
Minutes later, the goal was gone.
For Guasch, that sequence summed up everything that is wrong with the current system.
“Now you have someone up there, and I don't know how many assistants are alongside him, and three or four screens in front of him. There can be no mistake,” he argued. “No, they say ‘he interpreted it’... Stop interpreting, and stop twisting the language in this way, and talking about grey areas, the intensity of the challenge, and excessive force... all of this is a distortion of reality.”
The journalist, who works with Cadena COPE and writes for El Debate, stripped away any nuance.
“They act in bad faith, and I am absolutely certain of that,” he said.
For Guasch, Real Madrid are not just playing against 11 men. “In front of you, you have your sporting opponent, then you have the biggest enemies, and those are these people, especially the VAR men, isn't that right?” he continued. “When I say VAR commandos, that's the truth.”
Mbappé penalty incident under fire
The criticism didn’t end with Espí’s disallowed effort. Guasch also zeroed in on the penalty missed by Kylian Mbappé, focusing on Marc Bartra’s encroachment into the area before the Frenchman struck the ball.
“They don't retake the penalty because they don't want to,” was his stark verdict.
“The person up there already knows what he has to do, and they have invented a rule... They have violated the international rule, and on top of that it goes against common sense,” he added.
Guasch then broke down the incident from his perspective.
“Bartra... does he affect the play? Yes, because he's the player who arrives to prevent or obstruct Mbappé's shot, and therefore... listen to me carefully... you said a month ago that this is a penalty and it must be retaken, so why do you interfere in this case?”
For him, the pattern is clear: the key decisions no longer belong to the referee on the grass.
“So who holds the decision in refereeing?” he asked, before answering his own question. “The person on the video technology, and that's it. Nothing more than that.”
Guasch, a former deputy editor-in-chief at AS and ex-columnist at Marca, has been one of the few prominent journalists to keep hammering away at the Negreira case and its shadow over Spanish officiating. His latest outburst suggests he believes that shadow has only grown darker – and that La Liga’s battles are now being decided as much in front of screens as on the pitch.
