José Mourinho returns to the Champions League with Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu this Tuesday against Inter (21:00, Movistar), and in the pre-match press conference on Monday he also returned to one of his most remembered phrases from his previous time at the club, also in the European Cup. Although he did not receive any questions about the match they lost on Saturday against Betis, he wanted to go back to an incident from that game: “Why wasn’t the penalty retaken?” he began. “Because VAR doesn’t know the rules or because VAR didn’t want to?”
The Portuguese coach was referring to the penalty that Álvaro Valles saved from Kylian Mbappé in the third minute of added time when his team was losing 1-0. VAR took more than two minutes to review whether Marc Bartra had entered the area before the Frenchman shot and ended up deciding it was not necessary. The Referees Technical Committee recalled that night a clarifying note on its website explaining that “a player will have invaded the penalty area if at the moment the penalty kick is taken he has one or both feet inside the area or on the penalty area line (including the semicircle). When evaluating a possible advance, the projections of the players’ bodies are not taken into account.” At the moment of the kick, Bartra has his left foot on the ground, according to VAR outside the area and semicircle, and his right foot and entire body in the air over the area.
Mourinho does not agree with the decision. “If VAR did not order the penalty to be retaken due to ignorance of the rules, they should go home. If VAR did not order it to be retaken because they didn’t want to, it’s even worse.”
It was the beginning of an intervention that recalled the famous one on April 27, 2011, after losing 0-2 against Barcelona in the first leg of the Champions semifinal in a match where the referee sent off Pepe for a tackle on Dani Alves. “Why? Why?” he started that night at the Bernabéu before reciting a list of referees’ names he thought had helped Barça. “Obrevo, Stara, Bussaca, Frisk, De Becklere, Stark… Why does the same thing happen in every semifinal? It’s a fantastic team, but why every year? I don’t know if it’s the UNICEF advertising, Villar, who gets along very well with UEFA, or if they are just very nice. Congratulations on everything they have achieved. The others don’t stand a chance.” And he finished by attacking the Barcelona coach: “Guardiola is a fantastic football coach, who won a Champions with the Stamford Bridge scandal, where there were four penalties not awarded. If he wins it now, it will be with the Bernabéu scandal. I would be ashamed to win them like that.”
After saying a few days ago that he trusted the Spanish referees, Mourinho recovered his old phrase on Monday to air his first doubts, this time about VAR. “Why didn’t he call the referee to see the monitor? A bit strange, something a bit strange there. I want to go in the direction of honesty and think that he didn’t know the rules. But I want to make it very clear that we didn’t lose because of this. We could have missed the penalty retake.” And he continued with the litany: “Why does the Real Madrid captain [Vinicius] have a yellow card? Why do they tell us that the captain has the right to approach the referee to ask for some explanation?”
The memory of the match against Betis served him to modulate the message about Madrid’s first defeat since his return to the bench ahead of the Champions debut against Inter: “I want to win. I could say I want to play well, but I don’t want to play well like against Betis and lose. I want to win,” he said. “The goals we missed were an anomaly.”
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