The Madrid dressing room after the Wanda game was a clamor: “How is it possible that after going to see the hand on the screen, I insist that this is not a penalty?” Others went further: The same thing always happens to us with this referee. He has never given us anything. You could see it coming! The anger with Hernández Hernández was so undisguised that even Butragueño, director of Institutional Relations and a man who never leaves a comma from the script, dared to say what almost all Madridistas think. “We believe it is a penalty. The ball hits him in the hand. We have not had luck again with Hernández Hernández. It's a shame. At the end of the first half you left with a draw and the second you face it differently.” The outrage moved to the noble floor. The president, Florentino Pérez, spoke with his trusted executives and did not explain how after seeing him the canary on the screen did not whistle, despite the fact that this season there have been numerous similar plays that have received penalties. Without going any further, on Friday they called Gayà a penalty for an action on his back and with the ball hitting between the shoulder and the arm … Casemiro himself had an impact on that line of argument: “What we do not understand is the criteria that exist to whistle hands.”
Also Madrid's savior striker, Karim Benzema, left a statistical reflection as true as life itself: “When the referee goes to see him on the screen, 90 percent of the time gives a penalty.” With Hernández Hernández it rains over wet. In the Classics he had several big errors that are pointed out within the white club. He stopped calling a clear penalty at the Camp Nou committed by Jordi Alba on Marcelo. He also annulled a legal goal by Bale for an alleged foul on Jordi Alba himself. In addition, he enabled a goal from Messi after a clamorous foul by Luis Suárez on Varane in the previous action. And in a Classic at the Bernabéu, a clear penalty from Umtiti on Cristiano stopped whistling. And last year he stopped taking two penalties in the Levante area, in Orriols, and ended up arguing with Sergio Ramos. The captain came to blurt out that “Before you could talk with the referees and now you can't. I have told him that if he had something personal with me to be able to solve it.”
That is why the appointment of Hernández Hernández to the derby, a day after Miguel Ángel Gil de Velasco Carballo complained about using Lemar's move in Villarreal in an example of a pardoned expulsion, has increased the discomfort of the white club. It seems that they gave Atleti a referee “nothing suspicious with Madrid”. The problem is that it was the other way around. A key play that can be worth a League. With that penalty the game could have been another and if Madrid had won now it would be two points behind the leader and not five …