Espanyol announces the challenge of his match against Atlético de Madrid and requests its annulment

The news has once again sprung up in Spanish football with another arbitration controversy. He Spanish announced that challenges the game Atlético de Madrid faced on Wednesday night and ended with a draw at three.

The Catalan club had asked for an explanation for the award of Griezmann’s goal that resulted in the 0-2. The Spanish directive believes that there was no image showing that the ball had crossed the goal line and asked the VAR for the evidence with which the decision was made. In the absence of a convincing answer, he has made the decision.

The club is seeking an agreement on the nullity of the match and is suing the league commission for negligent and serious action by the referee group and the VAR referees appointed by the Spanish Football Federation.

Full text of RCD Espanyol statement

After the match against Club Atlético de Madrid ended, RCD Espanyol formally requested the Technical Commission of Referees (CTA) for the image or sequence that would endorse the award of the second goal for the Madrid team, in a decision made by the referees VAR (Video Assistant Referee) and that it was a correction to the match referee’s decision. Let’s not forget that, as the regulation itself states, in order to change an arbitral decision by Las Rozas, there must be a convincing and unassailable image for it.

This afternoon we received a response from the person in charge of the VAR project, Mr. Carlos Clos Gómez, in which he informs us that on the basis of the current regulations it is not possible for them to provide us with images or conversations related to the decisions taken in the room VOR, but confirmed that the image used to cancel the referee’s decision and validate Atlético’s second goal was the one shown on television, the image of what is known as the ‘ spider cam’.

Based on the above, RCD Espanyol would like to state the following:

1.- The only image used to award the goal provides a perspective from which it is impossible to determine whether the ball went in or not. In addition, all the own (club’s) and third party analyzes that we have had access to would show, on the contrary, that the ball does not cross the goal line in its entirety at any point.

2.- That this course of action is contrary to the VAR protocol, as it corrects an arbitration decision without any conclusive evidence. Therefore, there is a falsification of the match and a clear negligence in the application of the rules and in the use of the technology available, resulting in irreparable damage to our club in the result of yesterday’s match and therefore in our qualifying situation.

3.- In addition, we believe that a precedent has been set this week that creates a new paradigm in sports justice in Spanish football, as the league commission intervenes in decisions previously settled on the field and in VAR. After the Valencia CF – Real Madrid match, the committee understood that the use of technology and available images by the VAR referees in an action of that match was “totally biased, biased and decisive for the referee’s error in judging what happened happened”. Deriving from all of the above, it was decided to withdraw a red card that had been shown to a player.

This new paradigm, in our opinion, should have been used in the present case and should also have been applied by the committee, including in the match we played on matchday number 33 at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán Stadium, in which Validity was awarded to the Sevilla FC’s first goal in an action preceded by a foul on our player Brian Oliván, with the field referee showing no (available) VAR shot clearly appreciating the foul.

4.- Due to all of the above, RCD Espanyol considers its rights violated and feels seriously harmed. Therefore, we will contest the game played yesterday and therefore request that an agreement be made to void it. Likewise, in defense of its legitimate interests, RCD Espanyol is studying possible additional legal actions for the potential financial loss resulting from this action. It is extremely important to state that we do not intend to denounce the existence of human arbitration error inherent in the nature of sport. What RCD Espanyol indicts before the match committee of the RFEF is the existence of gross negligence on the part of the arbitration group appointed for the above match and in particular of the VAR referees appointed by the RFEF, of which at the same time a manifest and flagrant material error arises, causing irreparable damage to RCD Espanyol, both sportingly and possibly financially.

We understand that it is incompatible to boast of the highest standards and witness a “partial and biased” use of clearly inadequate technology. Striving to have the best league in the world requires both facts and good intentions.