Tomás Guasch Critiques La Liga Refereeing and VAR
Tomás Guasch did not hold back. After Real Madrid’s 1–0 defeat to Real Betis, the veteran Spanish journalist tore into La Liga’s refereeing and, above all, its use of VAR.
“There must be someone whose only job is to follow the Madrid goals”
Speaking on YouTube with content creator Ricardo Ramos Nera, in comments later carried by Defensa Central, Guasch painted a picture of a system almost designed to hunt down Real Madrid goals.
“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. There must be someone whose only job is to follow the Madrid goals,” he said.
“They replay the footage. They rewind two or three times until they find that the player was in an offside position. 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.”
Guasch, one of the few journalists who still regularly revisits the Negreira case, used Sunday’s controversy as fresh ammunition in his long-running war on Spanish officiating.
The Espi header that lit the fuse
His fury focused on the 87th-minute offside decision against Carlos Espí. The forward had risen to meet a cross with a superb header against Real Betis, seemingly salvaging something for Madrid late on.
Espí had received the ball from Vinícius on the right flank. On the pitch, referee Hernández Hernández gave the goal. Up in the booth, Iglesias Villanueva, in charge of VAR, saw it differently. After a long check, the goal was ruled out.
For Guasch, that process has become the core of the problem.
“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. 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,” he argued.
The Cadena COPE voice and El Debate columnist then went straight for the officials’ integrity.
“They act in bad faith, and I am absolutely certain of that.”
“VAR commandos” and the missed Mbappé penalty retake
Guasch didn’t just stop at the disallowed goal. He widened his attack to what he sees as a pattern: referees on the field overshadowed by those in the booth.
“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?” he continued. “When I say VAR commandos, that's the truth.”
He then turned to another flashpoint: the penalty missed by Kylian Mbappé, with Marc Bartra stepping into the area before the French forward struck the ball. The spot-kick was not ordered to be retaken.
His verdict was brutal.
“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 dissected the Bartra incident with the same intensity.
“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?”
“Who holds the decision? The person on the video technology”
For Guasch, this is no longer about isolated mistakes. It is about where power really lies in Spanish football.
“So who holds the decision in refereeing? The person on the video technology, and that's it. Nothing more than that.”
Coming from a former deputy editor-in-chief of AS and ex-columnist at Marca, the words carry the weight of someone who has watched La Liga from the inside for decades.
The question now is whether anyone inside Spanish refereeing will answer them.
