Tomás Guasch Criticizes La Liga Refereeing After Madrid Defeat

Spanish journalist Tomás Guasch has launched a ferocious attack on La Liga refereeing after Real Madrid’s 1-0 defeat to Real Betis, accusing VAR officials of actively looking for ways to rule out 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 stacked against the league leaders every time they find the net.

“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 scour every frame 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,” Guasch 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

The spark for his latest outburst was the offside decision against Carlos Espí in the closing stages at the Benito Villamarín.

With Madrid chasing an equaliser in the 87th minute, Espí met a Vinícius cross from the right with a superb header. On the pitch, referee Hernández Hernández pointed to the centre circle. Goal given. Iglesias Villanueva, in charge of VAR, then stepped in. Minutes later, the goal was gone.

For Guasch, that sequence summed up everything.

“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.”

Guasch, who works with Cadena COPE and writes for El Debate, did not soften his stance.

“They act in bad faith, and I am absolutely certain of that,” he said.

Then he went a step further, describing referees as a rival force Madrid must overcome.

“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.”

His words carry weight in Spain. Guasch is one of the few prominent journalists who still regularly hammers away at the Negreira case and its shadow over Spanish officiating, and he is not backing off.

Mbappé penalty adds fuel to the fire

The controversy did not end with Espí’s header. Guasch also seized on the penalty missed by Kylian Mbappé, focusing on Marc Bartra’s movement into the area before the Frenchman struck the ball.

For him, the decision not to order a retake was not an oversight. It was a choice.

“They don't retake the penalty because they don't want to,” he said flatly. “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 the incident to underline his point.

“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?”

For Guasch, the pattern is clear: the decisive voice is not the one on 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 blast leaves a stark question hanging over La Liga’s season: if the real power lies in the VAR room, how many more nights like this are still to come?