MADRID, 8 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
This Friday, the Appeals Committee of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) rejected Real Madrid’s allegations for the expulsion for a straight red card of English midfielder Jude Bellingham last Saturday at Mestalla and upheld the two-match ban.
Competition punished the international with two games, sent off at the end of the match against Valencia by referee Jesús Gil Manzano for addressing him “in an aggressive attitude” and repeating “on several occasions loudly: ‘it’s a fucking goal’ fucking goal’)”, and the Madrid team appealed to have the sanction annulled, emphasizing the existence of “manifest material error” and that the Competition had indicated in its ruling that there was no “aggressive attitude” but rather “disconsideration and contempt” .
In any case, the organization recalled that, “except in the sole and exceptional case of manifest error, it lacks any jurisdiction to intervene and refute the assessment and qualification made by the referee, even when the review of the application of the Rules of the Game made would give rise to potentially different results from those to which the referee’s on-site assessment recorded in the minutes gave rise”.
“Having analyzed in detail the arguments and allegations of the appellant club, as well as the videographic evidence provided, this Appeal Committee understands that it is not possible to appreciate a manifest material error capable of distorting the presumption of veracity of the arbitration report, given that the images show a sequence of events compatible with the account of events recorded in the minutes that concluded with the player’s sanction,” he added in his resolution.
The committee clarified that “it is not disputed that other interpretations are also possible and, consequently, results different from those adopted by the referee”, but that this “does not mean that the interpretation that the referee made at that moment and that he reported in the minutes be ‘impossible or ‘clearly erroneous’ in the sense indicated in this resolution”.
Furthermore, he pointed out that the videographic evidence presented by Real Madrid “does not contain the complete sequence of the events recorded in the minutes” and that it “does not include” the moment of what Gil Manzano wrote but rather begins with Bellingham “along with other players, already next to the referee”, so “he has not been able to verify how the approach” of the Englishman occurred, “whether he was running or not and what his attitude was at that moment, which is the true content of the report.”
“Therefore, since the facts recorded in the minutes have not been distorted, with sufficient evidence to show the existence of the material error, this reason for appeal must be rejected,” the Appeal Committee decided.
Regarding Real Madrid’s consideration that Competition did not legally classify the action as violent, it indicated that the club “does not discuss the existence of an act of inconsideration that it seems to implicitly recognize” but rather focuses on “the legal classification of some facts, which which necessarily excludes the debate of manifest material error”. Furthermore, he believes that Competition proceeded to “correctly classify the conduct” of Bellingham, “imposing the minimum sanction of suspension that it contemplates.”