Mateo Busquets Ferrer, the referee who stopped the Metropolitano derby, has frequented the same gym in Palma de Mallorca for ten years, where he goes unnoticed. Until this Tuesday. In the morning two women approached him who confessed that they knew nothing about football, that they even feared that they were in the wrong person, but that they fulfilled the mission of sending him a message: “Our husbands told us to congratulate you.”
In addition to the global embarrassment, Sunday’s Atlético de Madrid-Real Madrid game led to a very rare event: the emergence of a referee. These occasions sometimes serve as the stage for the sudden explosion of very young, or very unknown, football talents. The enthusiasm that the performance of a referee of only 30 years provoked in the union is comparable. For example, in former referee Eduardo Iturralde Fernández: “I was watching the game, and what pride. I thought: ‘That’s great, buddy, with everything that’s happening to us…’.
Another former referee, Antonio Mateu Lahoz, who had criticized his appointment for such a crude match, told Movistar of a kind of sudden conversion: “There is going to be a before and after in refereeing,” he said. “This boy has only been in professional football for two years and has shown a calmness, a temper, a self-confidence…”
Busquets Ferrer’s career has been meteoric. After four seasons between 2nd and 1st RFEF, the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) promoted him to Second for the 2022-23 season and First for the next one, 2023-24. When it was announced that, with such limited experience in the elite, he had been awarded such a loaded match, criticism spread among referees. It was an almost personal endeavor of the president of the CTA, Luis Medina Cantalejo, who was very convinced of the young referee’s abilities. He proposed his name at the meeting of the Appointment Committee, and the representative of LaLiga, the former referee Daudén Ibáñez, and the representative of the CSD, the former referee Puentes Leira, agreed without any hesitation.
Behind the assignment was also the intuition of the CTA that Busquets Ferrer can become a great referee and even occupy the international position at the end of the season that Soto Grado, now 45 years old, will free up. They believed that the time had come to test him in a big game, which ended up having even more success than feared due to the extra-sports load.
Medina has had him on his radar for years, as Iturralde says: “He warned me when he was in 1st RFEF,” he says. “You could already see the same ways with the players, in the conflicts. He has temperance, which is something that cannot be learned. It’s like the haggler, you either have it or you don’t. I was a loose cannon. I was there for 17 years, and although I wanted to learn it…”
Before reaching the boiling point of the lighters, Busquets Ferrer had already shown that trait, as can be seen in several sections of the derby video broadcast on Monday by the CTA. At the end of the first half, Luka Modric approaches him to protest the card he had shown him: “Tell me, Luka. “The card.” The Croatian begins his complaint: “You give me a card for nothing.” The referee does not change his measured tone: “Yes, for me, yes, for me it is clear. Ways to look at it… Thanks, Luka.” Modric continues to complain and the referee, in his line: “Thank you, Luka. “Thank you, Luka.” Until Luka gives up and goes to the locker room. “OK, Jude,” he tells Bellingham, who also threatens to complain.
Although the crucial moment was deciding to temporarily suspend the match, something for which it is difficult to find precedents in the First Division. After ordering the two mandatory warnings over the public address system, Courtois once again draws his attention to the throwing of objects and approaches the goalkeeper: “Can’t you play? Okay. We get inside.” He explains it to the coaches and asks the players to leave. Modric does not see it clearly: “It’s going to be worse, eh,” he warns him. “Well, we’ll see, we’ll see,” he answers. And it wasn’t worse.
According to CTA sources, this calmness and mastery of situations of maximum pressure are character traits that his reports have highlighted at least since he was 26 years old. “He is a very serene guy, very calm; and at the same time, firm and analytical. It draws attention for its young age,” they say.
Busquets Ferrer began to lean towards the whistle at the age of 15 due to a half-joke from his father, who after he played a bad game told him that perhaps he should think about refereeing: “The following Monday I went to watch him and a course was just starting. . I signed up with my uncle and I combined it while continuing to play soccer.”
Before leaving him permanently in the youth team, when he spent more and more time on the bench, he played on the left wing, and at the age of 11 he even coincided in the Balearic youth team with Sergi Darder, now a Mallorca midfielder.
Parra Iturralde took the right path: “He has everything to be a top referee. In 24 matches in the First Division he has achieved something that is very difficult, making the footballers buy his mistake. They trust their decisions. There are referees who, after 12 years, even if they get it right, are in doubt for the players,” he explains. “It also has aspects to improve. It is difficult for him to get red cards, perhaps because he was a footballer, although I wish all the referees had played. But you do learn that.”
What comes as standard is calm. At the end of the very complex derby he was “so normal,” according to CTA sources. He had dinner at the stadium, took the time necessary to write the minutes explaining the suspension and left for the hotel shortly before one in the morning. The next morning he had an early flight to Palma, where his wife was waiting for him with their two almost-baby twins.
