Mourinho and Tebas Escalate La Liga Neutrality Row Over Refereeing Bias

A LIGA OF ITS OWN

While football managers deflecting from poor results by blaming referees is hardly groundbreaking, few match the theatrical intensity of José Mourinho’s wounded innocence. Two decades after his grievances helped force Swedish official Anders Frisk into retirement, the manager’s catalogue of red cards, touchline bans and self-pitying monologues remains unparalleled. Following Real Madrid’s 2-1 loss to Atlético, Mourinho presented assembled journalists with a printed A4 sheet of screen-grabs showing two tackles he deemed red-card worthy. “We can save ourselves the bother of the press conference because the story is right here,” he harrumphed, brandishing the paper before embarking on a paranoid barrage about Spanish officials conspiring against the plucky Blancos.

La Liga president Javier Tebas subsequently responded on social media to an El Debate opinion piece by Tomás González-Martín, which argued that referees were damaging the league by refusing to pander to Madrid. “Here they go again, the mouthpieces and the regime’s television, building the same old narrative: the permanent conspiracy,” Tebas thundered. “But this article goes further: it claims that referees harm ‘the business that feeds them’. What exactly is it asking for? Refereeing based on revenue, viewership or the badge? What a way to understand equality in the competition.”

Though Tebas was right to defend officials against institutional bias allegations and to reject commercial considerations in decision-making, he aimed at the wrong target. By attacking an opinion piece rather than Mourinho’s comments, he invited accusations of partiality toward Madrid. Real Madrid’s official statement declared it “intolerable that the president of La Liga uses his institutional position to continue discrediting and attacking Real Madrid” and demanded a leader whose “fundamental duty of neutrality” could manage the competition’s potential — implicitly, neutrality tilted in Mourinho’s favor.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“You can always play the ​moralist, but I think everyone would say yes to that. I ​don’t want to ‌have to work ​any more after my ​career. I didn’t need to after City either, but now I can also set up future generations of my family well. If this choice means my grandchildren can also live comfortably, why wouldn’t I do it?” – Tijjani Reijnders makes the rare admission that he’s a footballer moving somewhere for the money, having joined Al Qadisah in Saudi Arabia from Manchester City on a deal worth a reported €100m over four years.

double quotation markOK, I’m putting my head above the parapet here, but I disagree with the prevailing view that Thomas Tuchel’s tactics and substitutions led to England’s defeat to Argentina in the Geopolitics World Cup (yesterday’s Football Daily). I believe it was individual errors and an obsession with Lionel Messi that caused the two goals conceded. Goal one: Djed Spence and Harry Kane were doubling up on Messi but Elliot Anderson was unnecessarily drawn over to Messi, which made space for Enzo Fernández to score. Poor defending. Goal two: when marking Messi, Spence and Nico O’Reilly were in parallel with each other rather than being diagonal. This was also poor defending and enabled Messi to cross” – Mike Harrison.

double quotation markOf course, like all right-minded people, I only get my football news from Big Website, but I did chance upon this piece from the wonderfully named Argentinian outlet, Diario Olé. Apparently, the Argentinian FA (which once held an election between two candidates with its 75 members that ended in a 38-38 tie) has announced yet another new trophy, the Recopa de Campeones, a round-robin competition between the winner of the Copa Argentina, SuperCopa Argentina and SuperCopa Internacional, which means Argentinian football looks like this. The late, great Maurits Cornelis Escher would be proud” – Noble Francis.

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