The row between Spain’s biggest club and the man who runs its top flight has boiled over into a public standoff. Real Madrid on Tuesday issued an official statement demanding Tebas quit, calling his conduct “inappropriate” and accusing him of using his institutional role to attack the club. Within hours, Tebas hit back with a defiant message of his own.
The trigger was Tebas dismissing Real Madrid’s refereeing complaints after their 2-1 derby defeat to Atlético Madrid at the Metropolitano on Sunday. In a lengthy social media post, the league president ridiculed the idea of anti-Madrid bias.
“Claiming that referees are directed against Real Madrid is living in another galaxy,” Tebas wrote, and added that the narrative served as “an excuse to cover up other shortcomings that are plain to see.”
Real Madrid: ‘urgent need’ for a neutral president
The club’s statement turned a long-running feud into a formal demand for Tebas’s departure.
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“Our club considers it intolerable that the president of LaLiga uses his institutional position to continue discrediting and attacking Real Madrid in the manner he does during each of his public appearances,” the statement said.
Real Madrid argued that Spanish football “urgently needs a leader capable of managing it with the fundamental duty of neutrality” and called Tebas’s public commentary on independent journalism about the club “utterly absurd and irresponsible.”
Tebas: ‘I answer to no one’
Tebas replied on the same day with a message aimed squarely at club president Florentino Pérez.
“The president of LaLiga is not the owner of the competition. The president of Real Madrid is not either,” he said.
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He rejected the demand for his exit outright.
“I am not the owner of LaLiga, nor will I run it as if it belonged to a single club. I respect everyone. I answer to no one.”
Huijsen sent off in Sunday’s derby
The derby loss was the flashpoint. Real Madrid conceded a penalty and lost defender Dean Huijsen to a red card in the 53rd minute after VAR review, when the referee ruled he had dragged down Atlético’s Giuliano Simeone in the box.
Alejandro Grimaldo tucked away the resulting penalty and Jonathan David added a second before Antonio Rüdiger pulled one back late, Opta data shows. José Mourinho, back in charge of Real Madrid after returning to the club in June on a three-year deal, saw his side complain formally about the officiating in the days that followed.
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