Real Madrid Loses Vinícius Appeal, Demands Tebas Resign Over Goebbels Comparison

It was a busy Friday at Valdebebas. While the club tried to convince the federation that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding over the referee's report, it was also dealing with a verbal scandal that ended with a call for a resignation. Two fronts, the same day, and neither brought good news for Real Madrid.

Let's start with the soccer side of things. The RFEF's Appeals Committee rejected the club's appeal on Friday against the four-game ban handed to Vinícius Júnior, the punishment that followed his straight red card in last weekend's league match against Villarreal. The Disciplinary Committee had split the sanction into two parts: two games for pulling Nathan Saliba's hair "with the ball in play, with the ball not being contested between them," under article 130.2 of the Disciplinary Code, and another two for confronting the referee in an aggressive manner after seeing the red card, under article 127. Both infractions also carry an additional fine of 1,300 euros each.

Madrid had asked for the sanction to be thrown out entirely, arguing there had been a factual error in the referee's report. According to the club, the footage showed that Vinícius had not pulled his opponent's hair but that there had been accidental contact between his hand and the hair and headband worn by the Villarreal player during a normal tussle in the run of play. The club also argued there was no real risk to the opponent's physical safety and that the referee never identified a specific phrase to justify the charge of protesting.

The Appeals Committee didn't buy either argument. On the hair pull, it was blunt: "the footage allows the hair pull to be clearly seen, and the alternative explanations offered by the club do not undermine the certainty of the referee's account." As for the claim that there was no real risk, the committee found that there was indeed one, and that Vinícius's action came outside any legitimate contest for the ball. Regarding the protest toward the referee, the committee pointed out that the report doesn't simply say the player raised his voice: it describes how, after being sent off, he kept shouting in protest and moved toward the official in an aggressive manner, to the point that his own teammates had to hold him back. "The absence of specific verbal expressions identified does not mean the conduct was not typified, given that the protest was sufficiently described and supported by other elements," the body concluded.

The practical result: Vinícius will miss the upcoming league match against Sevilla, the Clasico on Sunday the 25th at Spotify Camp Nou, the trip to face Racing in Santander on November 1, and the game at Mestalla against Valencia on the 7th.

The storm with Tebas

If the soccer situation was already a headache, the institutional side only turned up the heat. That same morning, Javier Tebas had gone after two journalists over their coverage of the club's complaints about refereeing, saying that "every day it becomes harder to tell your articles apart from a press release from Real Madrid's front office." Up to that point, it was just another jab in the usual war between the club and LaLiga. The trouble came next, when he drew a parallel between that "systematic repetition, the construction of an enemy, and the subordination of facts to the narrative" and the methods of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. He later tried to walk it back:

The comparison is with those propaganda techniques, not with an ideology, and certainly not with Real Madrid's fans.Javier Tebas

The clarification didn't do much good. Real Madrid fired back hours later with a scathing statement, calling the remarks "absolutely intolerable and of extraordinary gravity," and went straight after the supposed apology: "The clarification that it does not refer to Nazi ideology does not lessen the deeply offensive, morally repugnant, and institutionally unworthy nature of his statements."

The club also used the moment to bring up the Negreira case again, defending its complaints as "legitimate actions" and demanding "a complete overhaul of the refereeing system and of the federation's governance, management, oversight, and disciplinary structures." The statement left no room for doubt in its closing lines, calling for Tebas's "immediate resignation" both as head of LaLiga and as vice president of the RFEF, arguing that his "repeated statements and conduct" would be unacceptable in any European sports institution governed by "respect, neutrality, and integrity."

This isn't the first time this has happened. In fact, it's the second time in less than a month that Real Madrid has called for Tebas to step down. The club had already done so on September 22, in another statement demanding he be replaced by someone "capable of running the league and developing its full potential while meeting the basic duty of neutrality." Between sanctions that never get overturned and institutional clashes that never seem to cool down, the relationship between the Spanish giants and Spanish soccer's authorities shows no sign of finding calm.