Laporta chose a club board luncheon in Seville on Saturday, hours before Barcelona’s visit to Real Betis, to pick up a charge the league itself has been pushing for weeks.
“It seems they want to destroy everything, they want to destroy LaLiga, they want to destroy the Technical Committee of Referees,” he told reporters.
He did not stop at the league. Laporta extended the complaint to the Spanish federation, saying Real Madrid are unhappy with that governing body too.
Then came the embrace of the man Madrid are trying to force out.
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“How fortunate we are to have Javier Tebas as president of LaLiga,” Laporta said, adding that Tebas “has the experience to combat these attacks, which are unbecoming of a club.”
The intervention matters because Laporta rarely goes at Real Madrid this directly. The Barcelona boardroom has usually left the political ground to LaLiga; by naming the opponent himself, the president has broadened the fight from a refereeing argument into a club-to-club one.
A Goebbels post, a resignation demand
The underlying row flared on Friday. LaLiga president Tebas posted on X that Real Madrid TV’s handling of refereeing coverage “recalls propaganda mechanisms used by Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda,” Al Jazeera reported.
Real Madrid answered the same day with an official statement calling for Tebas to step down both from LaLiga and from his vice-presidency at the Spanish football federation.
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“Tebas’ repeated conduct demonstrates a lack of neutrality, respect and impartiality incompatible with his institutional responsibilities,” the club said in the statement.
Madrid also objected that Tebas had used the post to raise the Negreira case, the still-open investigation into payments by Barcelona to José María Enríquez Negreira, a former vice-president of the federation’s refereeing committee.
El Clásico a week away
Laporta closed the Seville remarks with a line aimed as much at his own dressing room as at the Bernabéu.
“I care little about what Real Madrid does, if not nothing at all. As long as they don’t mess with Barça.”
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Barcelona went on to beat Betis 5-2 on Saturday to stay top of LaLiga with a maximum nine wins from nine, six points clear of Real Madrid in third, according to the LaLiga table. The two meet at Camp Nou on Sunday 25 October, kick-off at 9pm local time.
