“I’ve seen some of these videos. “You try to stay away, but in the end they get to you,” Spanish referee Alejandro Jose Hernandez Hernandez told COPE radio last November.
“It's not the perfect situation to referee a football game. We referees have a lot of experience, but there is a general tension. They portray the image of the referee as an enemy, which is extremely negative for us.”
Hernandez Hernandez was asked if he was regularly featured in Real Madrid TV (RMTV) videos compiled by the club's official internal channel to support claims that he and certain other referees were biased towards their team. One infamous example was an 11-minute package of supposedly wrong key decisions by Hernandez Hernandez himself, all against Madrid, which was broadcast just days before he took charge of the decisive La Liga “derbi” against city neighbors Atlético in March 2021.
“I'm not saying he shouldn't referee Real Madrid's games. “I’m saying that there’s no way he should be refereeing anymore given all the mistakes we just showed,” Miguel Angel Munoz, assistant director of RMTV, said during the segment.
Hernandez Hernandez was last mentioned on RMTV last Thursday evening, following Madrid's Copa del Rey exit at Atlético, with the channel's director Jesus Alcaide including him in a roll call of officials who were said to be biased against Carlo Ancelotti's side.
Many remembered this story after Hernandez Hernandez appeared as a VAR official in Madrid's La Liga game against Almeria at the Bernabeu on Sunday. The home side were 2-0 down at half-time, but were able to win 3-2 thanks to three big decisions supported by VAR.
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Three times between the 57th and 67th minutes, Hernandez Hernandez intervened to ask the on-field referee, Francisco Jose Hernandez Maeso, to review his original decisions.
The first came after a cross entered Almeria's penalty area and the ball went out for a goal kick. In the audio recording subsequently released by the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Hernandez Hernandez told Hernandez Maeso: “I will recommend an on-field review to consider a possible penalty for handball by an Almeria defender.”
Hernandez Maeso followed the recommendation and Jude Bellingham converted the penalty to halve the deficit.
Next, a counter-attack by the visitors, which had begun after Dion Lopy pushed past Bellingham near the halfway line, was brought to a close by Sergio Arribas to give bottom-placed Almeria a 3-1 lead. Hernandez Hernandez intervened again and told his less experienced colleague: “I recommend that you watch out for a possible foul when moving towards the goal. I'll show you the contact, he is in the same phase of attack.”
Lopy was penalized for a foul on Bellingham and Madrid were only one goal behind.
The third incident occurred when Vinicius Junior converted a cross to make it 2-2, with Hernandez Maeso immediately disallowing the goal due to a handball from the Brazilian. “I'll show you: It hits him on the right shoulder, okay?,” Hernandez Hernandez said.
Hernandez Maeso revised his decision again.
All three calls were very controversial – and were actually discussed a lot.
Some pundits and fans saw an advance from Madrid striker Joselu contributing to the handball for the penalty. The Lopy foul on Bellingham was perhaps the clearest, but Hernandez Maeso had a full view of the incident up close and couldn't see any problem in real time.
The most problematic aspect was Vinicius Jr.'s handball, particularly the images used to decide whether to allow a goal. Almeria's official Twitter account questioned why the VAR team had not shown Hernandez Maeso a different angle of the incident – one that viewers at home saw as part of the TV broadcast of the match.
Among those who expressed their views on Sunday evening was Jaume Roures, founder of Mediapro, the Catalan company that provides VAR systems for several leagues in Europe, Africa and South America. “I would like to emphasize that the images of Vinicius' goal shown by VAR were a false take,” Roures said on Cadena Ser radio on Sunday evening. “The replays on TV from the front clearly showed that he hit with his arm.”
Broadcasters provide all images to VAR officials, who then decide which ones the on-field referee sees, Roures said. “There will be more than 20 cameras in use at a game in Madrid,” he said. “Then the VAR operators and referees decide how to use them. You get all live images, unedited.”
Mediapro is the company that introduced the first VAR season in Spain in 2018/19. In the middle of the election campaign, Madrid president Florentino Perez called then-RFEF president Luis Rubiales to complain about decisions that had been to the detriment of his team. At the end of that season, Mediapro was replaced by Sony's Hawk Eye, which operates the current system.
The same company also produced RMTV for 18 years until its contract was not renewed in 2019 and the Bernabeu hierarchy changed partners, to Telefonica and Supersport. Not surprisingly, the club's own television station has always been very supportive of its own team. However, these videos claiming that certain referees are against them have become increasingly common in recent years and are often broadcast in the days before that referee takes charge of a match in Madrid.
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Luis Medina Cantalejo, head of the Spanish Referees Committee, said earlier this month that he did not like the videos but did not believe they had any influence on the appointment of referees or decisions during matches.
“No other team in any sport in the world can do something like this,” Medina Cantalejo said. “It is not positive for the competition to try to put pressure on an official before the game, which is the aim of these videos.” But referees must be prepared for this. It doesn’t worry me and it doesn’t worry the referee either.”
Perez has also often publicly criticized the quality of refereeing in Spanish football, pointing out that too many decisions were made against his team, including during VAR reviews.
“Such sensitive and important issues as the quality of refereeing and the application of VAR depend directly on the Spanish federation,” he said at the annual general meeting in Madrid last November. “Nobody knows who draws these VAR lines or what framework they choose for them. This happens all the time and raises doubts about the Spanish refereeing skills. I trust that the Spanish government will act and take the necessary measures to renew the structures of refereeing in our country.”
Last month, Roures was ousted from Mediapro after leading the company for 30 years. And last December, the RFEF awarded the company a mandate to lead VAR in Spanish football again from next season, while Hawk-Eye will introduce its semi-automatic offside system.
La Liga president Javier Tebas is also interested in reforming referee management, including VAR, in Spain. Tebas told The Athletic last summer that ideally a new, independent body would be established – similar to the one in the Premier League.
In another tangle of relationships in Spanish football, Tebas and Roures were business partners. Roures is also a long-time associate of Barcelona club president Joan Laporta, and his company Orpheus Media has helped finance some of the “levers” the Catalan club has taken in recent transfer windows to be able to sign new players despite its heavy debts .
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Meanwhile, the judicial investigation into Barcelona's payments to former referee boss Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira continues, with Madrid and Perez officially entered as injured parties in the legal dispute.
Enriquez Negreira and Barca have denied any wrongdoing. The club said he was hired as an “external consultant” who prepared reports “related to professional refereeing.”
After Dani Carvajal scored the winning goal in the 99th minute of Sunday's game, Almeria were furious.
“We leave with the feeling that the game was stolen from us,” said their midfielder Gonzalo Melero. “The penalty, the hand goal, the disallowed goal… it goes beyond all limits. If we want to be the best league in the world, we are light years away.”
Madrid's reaction was relaxed.
Manager Ancelotti only said that in his opinion all three VAR decisions were correct, while match winner Carvajal added: “If Melero watches these games calmly, he will certainly realize that they were all correctly whistled.”
On RMTV, expert Alvaro de la Lama said: “We are not used to justice being done. We just want the technology to be used correctly.”
Meanwhile, Hernandez Hernandez was defended by former colleagues who now work in the media. “We cannot allow RMTV to continue to hunt our referees,” said Cesar Muniz Fernandez on radio station Onda Cero.
After his team won 4-2 at Real Betis later on Sunday, Barcelona head coach Xavi said: “I will be punished for speaking, but everyone saw what happened in Madrid.” I have already said that it was very will be difficult to win this league. I remember Getafe (in August), the obvious penalty against Raphinha in Vallecas (in a game in November against Rayo Vallecano), another against Joao Felix… That's how it is. We should have six points more.”
RMTV director Alcaide responded by claiming that Xavi's “entire career” as a Barcelona player should be “under suspicion”, referring to the payments Barca made to former refereeing boss Negreira between 2001 and 2018 – which in The Spanish public prosecutor's office is investigating a case for possible corruption.
Despite all the ongoing controversy, Vinicius Jr. had no problem posting a picture of the angle from which he scored his goal on Monday morning. “Golazo!!! “This is what I always did on Copacabana beach,” wrote the Brazilian striker.
And on Tuesday the RFEF announced it had lodged a police complaint after audio recordings of further VAR deliberations in Sunday's match were leaked to the Spanish media.
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Hernandez Hernandez has been appointed VAR for Thursday's Copa quarter-final between Atlético and Sevilla. As one of Spain's top officials, he knows that sooner or later he will be called up for another game in Madrid and will have to make tough decisions.
Elsewhere on the same radio show in November mentioned at the top of this article, Hernandez Hernandez was asked if he would be more worried if he knew he would be refereeing a game with Madrid.
“Honestly, I take it with the same normality as any other game and hope that the game goes as well and cleanly as possible,” he replied.
“You hope that if, whatever you do, you're in trouble, there won't be any 'gray' decisions.”
(Top photo: Alberto Gardin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)