The bitterest VAR of Madrid

Madrid have not lost as a visitor in the league for more than ten months. A streak that would span eight more months (the Whites fell in the last game before the pandemic, against Betis, on March 8, 2020) were it not for the unfortunate night (4-1 defeat) that the whites experienced in the visit to Mestalla last season, on November 8, 2020. The four Valencian goals came with controversy: a phantom goal (which arises from an unpublished foul) and three penalties against. This last data, a statistic that until then had only occurred in eight games in the history of the League, with the four that sanctioned Oviedo against Valladolid in 1995-96 as a record still in force.

The night passed placidly for Madrid when the game approached half an hour of play. Benzema had overtaken his team in the middle of the first half. Valencia, except for a very intense initial five minutes, had not disturbed the Courtois area. Until the ordeal began. Gil Manzano whistled a penalty by Lucas Vázquez's hand in a Gayà center. So clear that the Galician did not even protest. It was the least controversial decision of the Extremadura referee. The execution of the penalty was bizarre. Courtois stopped Soler, but he caught the rebound, crashed the ball into the post and Yunus Musah finished off on goal. But he and Lucas Vázquez had invaded the area at the time of the first shot by Soler and Iglesias Villanueva, who repeats tonight in the VAR, urged Gil Manzano to see the sequence of the play to determine that the penalty would be taken again .

That repetition of the penalty was the only relief, ephemeral, that Madrid had that night. In the final, Soler beat Courtois. Valencia turned the scoreboard before the break, in a phantom goal that kept both teams on edge until the VAR clarified that the ball had entered. The awarding of the goal was discussed by the whites, who claimed that at the beginning of the play there was a lack of Cheryshev to Asensio that the VAR ignored. Between one move and another, Gil Manzano did not consider punishable a slap in the Valencian area of ​​Yunus in the eye of Benzema.

The game was sentenced with two other penalties in less than a quarter of an hour. The first of them (the second of the game), due to a debatable lack of Marcelo to Maxi Gómez in the small area. The last maximum penalty, a clear hand from Ramos, gave the finishing touch to a Madrid that that night suffered the rigors of the regulations … and its only defeat at home in the last League.