Spanish journalist Tomás Guasch has mocked the standard of refereeing in La Liga this season, following Real Madrid's defeat to Betis by a single unanswered goal.
The Defensa Central network published Guasch's remarks, made during a conversation with content creator Ricardo Ramos Nera on YouTube, in which he said: "With every Real goal that doesn't come from a shot from 40 metres, they replay the footage on VAR and look for an excuse to disallow it. There must be someone whose only job is to follow the Madrid goals."
"They replay the footage. They rewind two or three times until they find that the player was in an offside position," he added. "I'm telling you they wouldn't disallow this goal if it were for another team. It goes on like that, replay after replay, until they finally find a pass in which the player was ahead."
Guasch is among the few journalists who still continue to criticise the Negreira case.
His anger centred on the offside call against Carlos Espí. The forward struck a superb header in the 87th minute against Real Betis.
Espí had received a pass from Vinícius on the right flank, and on-field referee Hernández Hernández initially awarded the goal, with Iglesias Villanueva in charge of the VAR technology. Minutes later, the video assistant referee chalked it off.
"Now you have someone up there, and I don't know how many assistants are alongside him, and three or four screens in front of him. There can be no mistake. No, they say 'he interpreted it'... Stop interpreting, and stop twisting the language in this way, and talking about grey areas, the intensity of the challenge, and excessive force... all of this is a distortion of reality," Guasch added.
The journalist, who works with Cadena COPE radio and is a columnist for the El Debate newspaper, was blunt: "They act in bad faith, and I am absolutely certain of that."
"In front of you, you have your sporting opponent, then you have the biggest enemies, and those are these people, especially the VAR men, isn't that right?" he continued. "When I say VAR commandos, that's the truth."
Nor did Guasch spare the penalty missed by Kylian Mbappé, after Marc Bartra entered the penalty area before the French striker took the kick.
His verdict on the officiating was scathing: "They don't retake the penalty because they don't want to."
"The person up there already knows what he has to do, and they have invented a rule... They have violated the international rule, and on top of that it goes against common sense," he added.
Turning to the detail of the incident, he said: "Bartra... does he affect the play? Yes, because he's the player who arrives to prevent or obstruct Mbappé's shot, and therefore... listen to me carefully... you said a month ago that this is a penalty and it must be retaken, so why do you interfere in this case?"
Guasch ended with a decisive claim about who really controls La Liga matches: "So who holds the decision in refereeing? The person on the video technology, and that's it. Nothing more than that."
Guasch previously held the position of deputy editor-in-chief of the AS newspaper, and also worked as a columnist for the Marca newspaper.