Introduction
Through twenty-five matchdays, the CTA's "Tiempo de Revisión" programme has officially recognised a number of refereeing errors. The club worst affected is Rayo Vallecano, with four. Celta and Espanyol follow on two apiece. On the beneficiary side, Atlético de Madrid and Barcelona each have two (BeSoccer tally, February 2026, through Matchday 25).
La Liga has a system for evaluating referees and formally acknowledging mistakes. As the first part of this series set out, AI-assisted grading, a public review broadcast, and a dedicated VAR corps have been assembled at speed since the summer of 2025. But between "being evaluated" and "having decisions corrected" lies a deep chasm. The system exists. So why do referees still not go to the on-field review monitor?
Chapter 1 – Two Interventions and You're Frozen: The Chilling Effect on VAR
The CTA's stated policy for 2025-26 is clear: VAR should intervene only for "clear, obvious and manifest" errors. A legitimate principle, consistent with IFAB guidelines.
On the ground, however, the principle takes a different shape. As COPE journalist Isaac Fouto reported on "El Partidazo de COPE" (February 2026, COPE), "if the VAR intervenes on a referee twice in a single match, that referee is sanctioned." In Fouto's words, "the CTA wants the absolute minimum of VAR interaction." A referee who shows a red card of his own accord is valued highly. But one who errs and is corrected by the VAR sees each correction counted as an "error"; two corrections send the referee to "la nevera" – the freezer, meaning suspension from match assignments.
Fouto described the consequences as "extremely serious" (extremadamente grave). When confronted with a borderline call, a VAR official has an incentive to stay silent. Intervening would push the on-field referee towards the "second strike" threshold, effectively placing a colleague's career at risk. Not intervening lets the call stand, but at least the referee's record is protected. According to Fouto, on one weekend alone five referees were taken off assignments under this criterion; among them was Gil Manzano.
By contrast, a referee who issues a straight red card without VAR assistance earns praise. In Rayo Vallecano versus Real Madrid, Díaz de Mera's decision to send off Pathe Ciss on the spot was received favourably inside the CTA. The system rewards the referee who does not need VAR. But in doing so, it structurally produces a VAR that stays silent when it should speak.
Chapter 2 – The Numbers and Their Asymmetry
The distribution of errors recognised through the CTA's public review reveals an imbalance. On the victim side, Rayo Vallecano stand out with four cases; Celta and Espanyol have two each. On the beneficiary side, Atlético and Barcelona have two apiece (BeSoccer, through Matchday 25). Real Madrid and Barcelona each have one case on the victim side as well. The numbers are small, but the skew is difficult to ignore.
Consider the two cases that worked in Atlético's favour. The first came on 30 August 2025 against Alavés. Giuliano Simeone's goal should have been disallowed for offside. When the goalkeeper's save rebounded, VAR official Pablo González Fuertes interpreted the goalkeeper's touch as giving Giuliano a new opportunity to play the ball legally. In reality, the touch came from an offside position – an interpretive error by the VAR team. González Fuertes was subsequently disciplined.
The second case occurred in the match against Rayo Vallecano on 24 September 2025. Koke grabbed goalkeeper Augusto Batalla by the neck. The referee showed a yellow card, but the CTA later acknowledged that a red card would have been the correct decision. Because the card was not upgraded at the time, Koke avoided a suspension and started the Madrid derby – Matchday 7 – just three days later. The uncorrected call allowed Atlético to field their captain in the biggest fixture on the calendar.
A note on sample size is necessary here. The absolute number of recognised errors through twenty-five matchdays is small, and drawing conclusions about deliberate bias towards any particular club would be statistically unsound. But the structural issue is separate. Four cases against a Rayo Vallecano fighting relegation carry a different weight from two cases benefiting an Atlético in the title race. Even if errors occur randomly within the system, their consequences do not land randomly.
Chapter 3 – The Clubs' Weapons and Their Limits
What can a club that feels wronged actually do?
On 3 February 2025, Real Madrid sent a formal letter to the RFEF following the Espanyol match, demanding the immediate release of VAR audio and stating that "what happened in this match exceeded any margin of human error or refereeing interpretation." A meeting at CTA headquarters followed on 17 February. That was not the end of it: in September 2025, Real Madrid escalated the matter to FIFA, judging that the issue could not be resolved within La Liga's framework.
Barcelona sent a letter to the RFEF on 14 February 2026 – two days after the Copa del Rey semi-final first leg at the Metropolitano, where Atlético won 4-0. The letter, however, was not a protest confined to that single match. It raised concerns about refereeing decisions across the entire season and demanded the publication of all VAR audio, "regardless of whether an on-field review took place." By coincidence, it was in the very same month of February, one year earlier, that Real Madrid had sent a letter of similar substance.
What the CTA can do is recognise errors after the fact and discipline the officials involved. David Gálvez Rascón, the VAR official in Girona versus Barcelona who failed to flag Echeverri's foul on Koundé, was suspended indefinitely. Daniel Jesús Trujillo, the VAR official in Real Madrid versus Real Sociedad, was demoted to assistant VAR. The system is moving. Referees are being disciplined. But whether the CTA has a formal obligation to respond to club complaints, or a deadline to do so, cannot be confirmed from publicly available information. And above all, no protest can retrospectively overturn a result.
The system functions not as "real-time correction" but as "post-hoc record-keeping." Clubs can write letters. The CTA can discipline referees. But the scoreline does not change.
Chapter 4 – Atlético's Duality
Diego Simeone has occupied a place in the landscape of Spanish football as a critic of the refereeing system for a long time.
On 24 January 2024, in the press conference before the Copa del Rey quarter-final against Sevilla – just after the VAR audio from Real Madrid versus Almería had been made public – Simeone said: "The referees are going through very pressured moments. Absolutely sure. The VAR improves them, but at the same time exposes them. That's the reality. It doesn't matter what gets leaked, but what happens, but they think we're all fools. That's what's annoying" (beIN Sports, 24 January 2024). An unvarnished articulation of structural distrust in VAR itself.
Almost exactly a year later, on 17 January 2025, at the pre-match press conference ahead of the Leganés fixture – a period in which the officiating in Real Madrid versus Celta was dominating the conversation – Simeone's response was brief: "I didn't watch yesterday's match. I was told about incidents that happened, but they've been happening for a hundred years. I don't know why anyone is surprised" (AS / Mundo Deportivo, 17 January 2025). Refereeing favour towards Real Madrid was not a flaw in the system, the implication seemed to be, but a chronic condition rooted in the soil of Spanish football.
And yet, in 2025-26, the CTA's own officially recognised error data places Atlético among the foremost beneficiaries. Giuliano's offside goal. The insufficient card for Koke's neck grab. Both were acknowledged by the CTA as errors; both worked in Atlético's favour. Critic and beneficiary at once. The duality sits uncomfortably.
But this is not a problem unique to Atlético. It is a structural one. As the preceding chapters have shown, the chilling effect on VAR produces errors, and those errors land asymmetrically depending on a club's league position and schedule. In one matchday Atlético benefit; in another, Rayo pay the price. Errors are not the product of intent towards any particular club but of random variance generated by an incentive to stay silent. Any club can find itself on either side. Simeone's "hundred years" remark inadvertently strikes at the heart of this structure. The problem is not individual decisions but the system that produces them.
Conclusion
The system exists. Transparency measures are advancing: AI-assisted evaluation, Tiempo de Revisión, a dedicated VAR corps, VAR audio disclosure, a labour agreement. All achievements of the past eighteen months. But when a "two-intervention punishment" incentive structure, a process that can only recognise errors after the fact, and the absence of any obligation to respond to club complaints all converge, the system ceases to be a guarantee of correctness and becomes instead an apparatus for "officially recording" the absence of correctness.
What the Negreira affair laid bare was not merely the corruption of specific individuals or organisations. It was a principle: transparency is not the act of building institutions but the act of those institutions earning trust. The machinery has been assembled at speed. But between "having the machinery" and "the machinery working" there remains a gap. La Liga's refereeing reform is still a work in progress.