Real Madrid Accuse Tebas of Targeting Club

Real Madrid have accused La Liga president Javier Tebas of a sustained campaign against the club, issuing a statement in response to his latest remarks on refereeing.

Tebas had commented on an article in El Debate that examined alleged bias among Spanish referees towards Real Madrid. "September isn't even over and they're already declaring the championship dishonest," he said. "It's much easier to point to a conspiracy than to explain what happens on the pitch."

Real Madrid responded with a lengthy statement addressing "the declarations made by the president of La Liga, Javier Tebas Medrano". "Our club considers it unacceptable that the president of La Liga uses his position to discredit Real Madrid and attack it in every one of his public appearances," the club said. "It is deeply concerning that the person responsible for representing and defending the interests of all La Liga clubs remains obsessed with Real Madrid, turning our club into a permanent target of his public attacks."

The statement went further, calling Tebas's latest comments "particularly serious and hard to understand" and "unbecoming of a responsible leader", since they were based on an article by an independent journalist in a digital outlet. It added that Tebas had gone as far as to assess the club's sporting strategy, which it described as "wholly inappropriate and irresponsible".

"It is striking that the president of La Liga devotes his time and personal appearances to constant attempts to publicly discredit Real Madrid, instead of contributing, as his position demands, to strengthening trust in the institutions that are supposed to guarantee the fairness of the competition," the club said. "In doing so, he continues to damage the image of our competitions and of Spanish football."

The statement concluded that, given this "improper and persistent conduct", Spanish professional football urgently needs "a leader capable of managing it and unlocking its full potential while observing the basic principle of neutrality".

The row follows Real Madrid's 1-2 defeat to Atletico Madrid, after which the club had already voiced displeasure with the officiating. A prolonged public dispute between and the body that runs its top division would carry consequences beyond this one fixture, potentially colouring how refereeing decisions involving Real Madrid are read and debated for the rest of the campaign.