“Referee victimhood is the opposite of greatness.” This is how his article yesterday in this Valdano newspaper ended in a clear allusion to the Madrid television videos, and I couldn’t agree more. In this, Florentino Pérez is not similar to Santiago Bernabéu, who once complained about some refereeing, like everyone else in the world of football, but he never oriented the club towards a culture of referee victimhood that at the time was a distinguishing factor of its two great national rivals, Atlético and Barça. Bernabéu didn’t have a TV, of course, but it did have a monthly newsletter that never ran a campaign like the one we’ve been seeing for months on Real Madrid TV. Yes, he had, in return, very good football signatures from beyond the borders, which spoke of a long view. In addition to information about the life of the club, its matches, its figures, its quarry and more.
RMTV has become the talk of the year due to its persistence and exaggeration. Whoever takes it seriously will be amazed that in the face of such and sustained referee hostility, Madrid has been able to not only win any title, but also remain in the First Division. It is true that the images that are broadcast are real, although the comments are sometimes exaggerated, but I find it an advantageous practice. Any referee who has been in the First Division for ten seasons, say, will have refereed several dozen matches against Madrid. It will not be difficult, digging with good professional zeal, to find in that pile of games between five and ten errors that would harm the white club. Captured, of course, by several cameras each of them. If they are placed all in a row the effect is devastating. It wouldn’t be so much so if we then listed the many other occasions in which errors by those same referees benefited Madrid. Either they hurt Barça, or Atleti. Or the rival on duty.
The channel does not have a large audience, although here it has found a good commercial vein, but all things about Madrid are amplified, among other means, by the long dozen accredited agitators in networks that the club shepherds, and thus the thing has become a grain for the Federation and its arbitration body, the CTA.
They ask me why they don’t do anything. We must answer that because of Enríquez Negreira, that elephant in the room that they pretend not to see. Negreira has not only been inspiring and to a certain extent justifying this continuous thunder from RMTV, but also the cause of federative paralysis in the face of such an attack. The passive reaction to the monstrous fact that Barça has had the vice president of referees on their salary for 17 years strips the Federation of any moral authority. An unofficial spokesperson told me “we have looked at it, but RMTV does not have the same CIF as Madrid, so it is not Madrid and we cannot sanction the club.” Another explained to me that the sanctioning regulations precede the existence of a television. Of course, the sanctioning regulations are vague enough to justify anything. For example, it’s worth giving Gayá a big buck for the same thing that others escaped unscathed.
On the eve of their recent visit to the Bernabéu, Sevilla denounced the practice of RMTV as coercive towards the referee. Competition immediately filed it, claiming that it does not specify which articles of the code this practice violates. José María del Nido junior, a combative guy of visible age, will insist with another more well-founded writing. It will be rare for him to achieve anything.
The Federation is chaired by a good man whom Rubiales distinguished with his finger from among all his peers who only aspires to perpetuate himself by not bothering anyone. Neither he nor anyone else could face anything related to the credibility of our arbitration without having seriously faced the Negreira case, shrouded in the fog of ‘omertá’ and protected by a Sports Law that is strikingly benign for cases of corruption, which prescribes at three years old.
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