Real Madrid TV Critiques Referee Over Mbappé Penalty Incident
The new La Liga season has barely started and already has its first full-blown refereeing storm. At the centre of it: Kylian Mbappé, a stoppage-time penalty, and Real Madrid’s own television channel going on the offensive.
The flashpoint came deep into added time of Real Betis’ 1-0 win over Real Madrid. Minutes after Carlos Espi had seen a Madrid goal ruled out, Mbappé stepped up from the spot in the 94th minute with the chance to rescue a point. His effort was saved. The Bernabéu club’s players immediately surrounded the referee, insisting a Betis defender had encroached into the area before the kick.
The referee waved away the protests and let play continue. Final whistle. 1-0 Betis. And that, as far as the officials were concerned, was that.
It was anything but.
According to Spanish newspaper AS, the incident has become one of the most debated moments of the opening rounds of La Liga. Real Madrid’s official TV channel then poured fuel on the fire, accusing the referee of making a “technical error” and failing to apply the laws correctly.
The channel’s analysis focused on the positioning of the Betis defenders at the moment Mbappé struck the ball. It argued that one defender had his right foot on the penalty-area line before stepping inside, insisting that this encroachment “directly affected the outcome of the play”. It also highlighted Héctor Bellerín, claiming he too had a foot touching the line when the shot was taken.
The club channel did not hold back. It called the decision “a contradiction from the referee” under the letter of the law and expressed disbelief “that a referee does not know his own regulations”. Its verdict was blunt: “This is a technical error.”
The anger did not stop there. In a pointed comparison, the Madrid outlet suggested that if the same incident had involved Barcelona, the outcome would have been different: “Had this happened with Barcelona, the penalty would have been retaken, and had Espi’s goal been for Barcelona, perhaps it would not have been disallowed.”
Oversight or incompetence — those were the two options Real Madrid TV put on the table as it dissected the episode, stating that the infringement during the taking of the penalty “was not awarded, whether due to oversight or incompetence”.
The refereeing team, for its part, maintained that Marc Bartra did not step on the line. Real Madrid’s channel pushed back again, arguing that even if Bartra never actually touched the line, he still charged forward early and intervened directly in the move after the save.
One missed retake, one disallowed goal and a 1-0 defeat: for Madrid’s in-house broadcasters, the story is not just about a lost match, but about a question that will hang over the early weeks of this La Liga season — where does interpretation end, and error begin?
