Tomas Guasch Criticizes La Liga Refereeing After Real Madrid Loss
Spanish journalist Tomás Guasch has launched a fierce attack on La Liga refereeing after Real Madrid’s 1–0 defeat to Real Betis, accusing VAR officials of acting “in bad faith” and targeting the club’s goals.
Speaking with content creator Ricardo Ramos Nera on YouTube, in comments later carried by Defensa Central, Guasch painted a picture of a system set up to hunt for reasons to rule out Madrid strikes.
“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,” he said. “There must be someone whose only job is to follow the Madrid goals.”
He claimed officials comb through every action until they can find a technicality.
“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 centred on the late offside call against Carlos Espí at the Benito Villamarín. With Madrid chasing an equaliser in the 87th minute, the forward powered in a superb header after a cross from Vinícius on the right. Referee Hernández Hernández gave the goal on the pitch. Up in the booth, Iglesias Villanueva and the VAR team saw it differently.
Minutes later, the goal was gone.
For Guasch, that sequence summed up what he sees as a warped use of technology.
“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 veteran reporter, who works with Cadena COPE and writes for El Debate, did not hold back on his wider conclusion.
“They act in bad faith, and I am absolutely certain of that,” he said.
“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? When I say VAR commandos, that's the truth.”
Mbappé penalty adds fuel to the fire
The controversy did not stop at the offside. Guasch also highlighted the penalty missed by Kylian Mbappé, focusing on Marc Bartra’s encroachment into the area before the Frenchman struck the ball.
For him, the decision not to order a retake was not a mistake. It was deliberate.
“They don't retake the penalty because they don't want to,” he said. “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 then broke down why he believes the incident demanded a second attempt.
“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?”
The person on the video technology, and that's it
Guasch is one of the few prominent journalists who still regularly brings up the Negreira case when discussing refereeing in Spain, and his comments on this match fit into that long-running mistrust.
For him, the balance of power in Spanish officiating has already shifted decisively away from the pitch.
“So who holds the decision in refereeing? The person on the video technology, and that's it. Nothing more than that,” he concluded.
A former deputy editor-in-chief at AS and past columnist at Marca, Guasch has spent decades around Spanish football. His latest broadside leaves a blunt question hanging over La Liga: if the real authority now sits in front of the screens, who will convince the game’s biggest voices that the system can still be trusted?
