Spain’s weekly VAR-review show, Archivo VAR, aired the audio and pictures from inside the booth over the weekend. Video assistant referee Guillermo Cuadra Fernández is seen flicking through every available replay for two minutes and twenty seconds, and ending the review without a shot clear enough to put on referee Mateo Busquets Ferrer’s screen.

No frame picked up the point of contact between Arda Guler and Peque Fernández in the 22nd minute, nor the force behind the arm swing. That is the paradox at the heart of the row. The Bernabéu is wired for broadcast, but LaLiga’s VAR room does not pull from every lens; it watches the same world feed that goes to viewers at home.

Spain’s Technical Committee of Referees defended Busquets Ferrer’s call for exactly that reason. Journalist Héctor González, on Cadena SER, reported the committee’s position that “the VAR cameras are the same as the television broadcast cameras,” and that “if there was no intervention, it is because there is no evidence that points clearly and beyond dispute to violent conduct.”

Kike Salas: “a clear red card”

Sevilla did not accept any of it.

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Defender Kike Salas told Movistar at half-time that the elbow had changed the match.

“I think we were in control of the match until Guler’s goal, even though before that he struck Peque with his elbow, which I consider an offence that warrants a clear red card,” Salas said.

“I’m going to watch the replay now, but I don’t know why the video assistant referee did not intervene, even just to review the incident.”

Full-back Juan Iglesias said afterwards he had seen “an act of aggression against Peque in the first half” and that “there were decisions that didn’t go our way.” Cadena SER’s Miguel Ángel Chazarri went further, calling the review “extremely serious” and talking of “the hiding of the images, this television manipulation” by a VAR booth that “could not find any clear footage.”

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“The production is pathetic”

Former LaLiga referee Eduardo Iturralde González turned his fire on the broadcast rather than on the officials.

“The production is pathetic, and it is also pathetic that in a stadium like the Bernabeu we watch a possible assault without a clear image,” Iturralde González said.

Real Madrid manager José Mourinho rejected the whole premise, saying he had seen no footage that proved Arda Guler should have walked. Sevilla coach Luis García Plaza, in his post-match press conference, insisted the challenge warranted a sending-off.

Arda Guler scored eight minutes after the incident, meeting Yan Diomande’s cross with a first-time finish, and Real Madrid went on to win 4-1 with two goals from Kylian Mbappé and another from Diomande. Manu Bueno pulled one back for Sevilla.

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The Turk is available on Sunday 25 October, when Real Madrid travel to Camp Nou for the Clásico. Kick-off is at 9pm local time.

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