There were about three and a half minutes of the eight added minutes in the Betis-Real Madrid match this Saturday during which Mourinho’s team, trailing on the scoreboard (0-1), was convinced they were going to equalize. It was the time that elapsed between Natan committing a penalty foul on Vinicius and the VAR explaining to Hernández Hernández that it was not necessary to retake the penalty that Álvaro Valles had saved from Mbappé, even though Marc Bartra was already floating inside the area at the moment the Frenchman struck the ball. And that central defender had been the one who prevented Mbappé from reaching the goalkeeper’s rebound and shooting again. Confusion spread through the stadium during those three and a half minutes, and the radio and television broadcasts for a bit longer. But the rule supports Bartra’s action, and the defender knew it.
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At the moment Mbappé shoots, the Betis defender has his left foot on the grass, right on the edge of the penalty area line and the semicircle. It is the only part of his body that has not entered the penalty area. The rest floats over the area, but the right foot has not yet touched the ground. The Referees Technical Committee published at the beginning of the season on the federation’s website a manual with clarifications on some plays of complicated interpretation, such as this one about players advancing during penalties: “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 penalty 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,” it says about this point. On Friday night at La Cartuja, Bartra’s body projection was already inside the area, but he had not yet stepped in, so his action was correct.
He knew it, as he said right after the match ended. He came to the game after having made a technical inquiry to a referee: “Several matchdays ago, I think it was Gayà, who did the little jump, and I asked a referee friend I have, from Segunda B, who is no longer refereeing, and he told me that if you are not stepping, it’s okay. So I tried to calculate as best I could. It’s true that if I had touched the ground half a second later, I would have been caught inside, but I tried to hold my foot there without stepping as long as I could, and it worked out well.”
At the moment, he had some doubt about whether he had landed before Mbappé struck, but the VAR scrutinized the images and found that at the moment the ball’s chip detected contact, Bartra was still in the air. The Frenchman was convinced otherwise, or he did not consider that the body projection was no longer taken into account as in some previous times. While they deliberated on the screens at the federation’s headquarters in Las Rozas, he grabbed the ball and went to wait with it next to the penalty spot ready to try his luck again against Valles.
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The goalkeeper had also benefited from his prior study of the situation. He was clear about what he was going to do if Mbappé shot from the eleven meters: “I was going to hold out as long as possible to not give clues, and I had decided that side, because the last two he shot to the opposite side,” he said. “We were clear. You have to have a bit of luck at those moments. He is a player who holds out a lot and hides his shot. We were very clear that we were going to go to my right side, and fortunately, he shot there.”
For almost three and a half minutes, he doubted if he would have to recalculate everything, but the VAR found the image of Bartra floating that corresponded with the CTA regulation clarification, and there the possibility of Madrid equalizing the match died. That blink that the defender held in the air resulted in Mourinho’s Real Madrid’s first defeat.
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