Spanish journalist Tomas Roncero, editor-in-chief of the Real Madrid-friendly newspaper "AS", has slammed the refereeing in Real Madrid's 3-0 win over Racing Santander at El Sardinero in La Liga. He reckons Jose Luis Munuera Montero got more than one controversial call wrong, even while admitting the penalty handed to Kylian Mbappe should never have been given.
Two incidents drew Roncero's focus. The first was Mbappe's spot-kick, awarded roughly 10 minutes in. The second was a challenge on Real Madrid's Diomande inside the box, which the journalist felt demanded a referee's intervention that never came.
Commenting on the two incidents, Roncero said: "The referee denied Diomande a very clear penalty, while Mbappe's penalty, for me, is not a penalty."
He doesn't deny there was contact between the Racing defender and the French forward. He just doesn't buy that it warranted a foul. "It's true he put his arm on him, but it doesn't mean nothing happened, yet I don't think the contact deserves a penalty to be awarded," he added.
What really stoked Roncero's fury was the Diomande incident, and he tore into VAR for failing to step in. "I don't understand why the VAR room did not ask the referee to review the challenge on Diomande, because that blow deserves a yellow card in my opinion, and if it deserves a booking, that means it's a foul, and the referee should have been alerted to it," he said.
His summary of VAR's showing was damning. The technology stayed silent on Diomande yet summoned the referee to review Mbappe's penalty. Two near-identical situations, two different responses.
Anticipating comparisons with other players, Roncero insisted his view wouldn't shift one inch. He'd have made the exact same argument had Lamine Yamal been on the end of a similar challenge that went unpunished, proof that his objection rests on the incident itself and not on who benefited.
Beyond the refereeing row, Roncero leapt to the defence of Real Madrid's display. All the talk about the officials, he argued, had buried the simple fact that his side were vastly superior. The result, he insisted, would have been the same without Mbappe's penalty.
The gulf between the two teams, in his eyes, was obvious. Real Madrid won 3-0 and could have added more, while goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, in his words, faced just a single shot.
Roncero signed off with a jab at anyone boiling the result down to the referee. Whoever thinks Real Madrid only talk about officiating, he said, either doesn't understand football or is wilfully ignoring what actually unfolded on the pitch.