Real Madrid demand Tebas resign over his Goebbels comparison

Friday 16 October began like another round in the long standoff between Javier Tebas and Real Madrid. In the morning, the LaLiga president posted a long message on X aimed at Real Madrid TV, the club channel he accuses of running a campaign against Spanish refereeing. The Madrid communication machine, Tebas wrote in a post reported by RMC Sport, does one thing: “select the incidents that suit it, repeat the grievance, feed the suspicion and name the enemies”. His conclusion reaches further: “This method recalls the propaganda mechanisms exploited by Goebbels, minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany.” He takes care to rule out any ideological comparison, and the passion of Madrid’s supporters.

The statement demands the exit

In the afternoon, Real Madrid published its answer on the club’s official website. The club finds it “absolutely intolerable and extremely serious” that an official holding two posts of responsibility in Spanish football should compare the club’s propaganda methods to those of the Nazi regime, and sweeps Tebas’s caveat aside: “The fact that he states he is not referring to Nazi ideology in no way lessens the deeply offensive, morally repugnant and institutionally unworthy nature of his words.” The statement then denounces a “lack of neutrality, respect and impartiality” incompatible with Tebas’s duties, returns to the Negreira case, which the club has taken to UEFA after no response from the Spanish bodies, and demands “a complete overhaul of the refereeing system”. The closing line leaves nothing open: Real Madrid “demands his immediate resignation” as LaLiga president and as vice-president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation.

An old feud in a new register

The backdrop runs back years: refereeing, the calendar and the Super League feed the quarrel between Tebas and Florentino Pérez, and the club channel airs compilations of refereeing errors that earn it the mockery of its rivals. In September, after the 2-1 defeat by Atlético, the Madrid president had already called for Tebas to go. This week turned up the heat: Vinicius’s red card against Villarreal, the four-match suspension that followed, and a trip to Valencia on 7 November scheduled less than 72 hours after the Champions League match in Athens. José Mourinho, furious at the red card shown to Vinicius, boycotted the post-match press conference after the win over Villarreal. The Goebbels reference moves the exchange into a register the usual statements had never touched. By late afternoon, neither the league, nor the federation, nor Tebas had answered publicly.