Real Madrid did not send any player to the mixed zone at the Metropolitano on Sunday evening. Behind the closed door, according to reporting by AS, the reason was tempers. The club feared that whoever walked out first could say something a disciplinary panel would then have to deal with.

What did make it out was the phrase now travelling across the Spanish sports press: “they’ve screwed us over and put a coward in charge of refereeing.” No player is named as the speaker.

The reference was to Ortiz Arias, the 41-year-old who took charge of the derby. Real Madrid finished with ten men after Dean Huijsen was dismissed in the second half for a last-man foul on Giuliano Simeone. Alejandro Grimaldo converted the resulting penalty and Jonathan David added a second before Antonio Rüdiger’s late reply.

‘Two red cards! Two!’

Bellingham did not wait for the tunnel. As the final whistle went, the England midfielder walked up to Ortiz Arias and shouted, “Two red cards! Two!”

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He was pointing at incidents Real Madrid felt had gone unpunished. Cristian Romero’s studs-up challenge on Bellingham drew a first-half yellow that VAR later switched from Bellingham to Romero, but did not upgrade to red. The second was Kang-in Lee’s tackle on Federico Valverde, an incident Real Madrid say has left the midfielder facing two to three weeks out.

Mourinho brings the pictures

Mourinho had prepared. The Real Madrid manager placed a printed sheet with pictures of the disputed tackles in front of the microphones.

“Those were two clear red cards,” he said. “Eleven against 10. Well, we can imagine what 50 minutes of 11 against nine would have been like if justice had been done.”

He accused the appointments committee of picking an official without the international experience to referee a fixture of this size, calling out Ortiz Arias’s age of 41 and his lack of top-level résumé.

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Simeone: ‘you shouldn’t cross that line’

Diego Simeone answered on the other side of the corridor, and part of what he said was aimed straight at his opposite number.

“We have to know how to respect the referee and our fellow professionals,” he said. “When someone crosses that line of respect, whether your name is Mourinho, Simeone, Flick or Pellegrini, it isn’t right. You shouldn’t cross that line.”

The tunnel had already boiled over at half-time. Rüdiger and Atletico midfielder Morten Hjulmand were involved in an altercation, and Mourinho’s assistant Pedro Machado and Atletico goalkeeping coach Pablo Vercellone were both sent off.

Courtois: ‘don’t let more points slip’

The only Real Madrid player who put his name to a public message was Thibaut Courtois. The goalkeeper wrote on social media that “what is obvious has frustrated us, but what is in our hands is to improve so we don’t let more points slip away.”

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Real Madrid are third in La Liga, six points off leaders Barcelona and one behind Atletico. The international break starts now, with the next Champions League fixture away at Roma on 14 October.

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