Real Madrid supporters unveiled a banner reading "This Isn't Soccer, It's Tebas and Negreira" during Sunday's match against Sevilla at the Santiago Bernabéu, while chants of "Tebas, resign now!" rang out from the stands. The banner was not shown on television during pregame coverage but became visible once the match got underway.
The protest came two days after Real Madrid officially called for Tebas's resignation, following comments he made comparing the club's in-house television channel, Real Madrid TV, to propaganda techniques used by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi regime's propaganda minister. That comparison, made on October 16, triggered the latest escalation in the dispute.
Real Madrid responded the same day with a statement demanding Tebas step down, also pulling the Negreira case and the state of Spanish refereeing into the row. The club said it was "particularly significant" that Tebas, as LaLiga president and vice president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation overseeing the Technical Committee of Referees, was "devoting his efforts to discredit Real Madrid instead of using his institutional responsibilities to help clarify these extremely serious events and bring about the necessary reform of Spanish soccer."
The Negreira case concerns payments made by Barcelona to companies linked to José María Enríquez Negreira, a former vice president of Spain's refereeing committee, and has fuelled wider scrutiny of Spanish soccer's refereeing system.
José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, president of Spain's National Sports Council, called on Tebas to apologize to Real Madrid for his remarks, but Tebas defended the Goebbels comparison he had made.
Tebas responds on social media
Tebas fired back on X after the banner was displayed and after videos were broadcast by Real Madrid TV before the game, arguing that the latest events proved his earlier allegations against the club's leadership. "Just two days have been enough for events to prove me right," he wrote.
He recalled that in his October 16 post he had singled out journalist Tomás González-Martín of El Debate as a mouthpiece for messaging from Real Madrid's leadership, and said the club had responded that day by "hiding behind the opinions of 'journalists unaffiliated with the club,' for which it claimed to bear no responsibility."
Tebas said he had asked the club to deny the Negreira comparison attributed to club sources and the accusation that LaLiga disadvantages Real Madrid through its scheduling, and to publish every request it had made to change match times, "including the approved requests that undermine their narrative of persecution."
Referring to the October 18 banner, Tebas wrote: "Are they also going to explain this away as an opinion expressed by someone unaffiliated with the club? The connection with the narrative I called out is there for everyone to see." He added that "singling people out, discrediting them, and fueling that hostility is deeply irresponsible," and said "leaders have an obligation to understand the consequences of the messages they promote and amplify."
Tebas also addressed a Real Madrid post from October 17 about "international press" coverage, saying reports from Reuters, the BBC and L'Équipe made clear that it was Real Madrid that had made the scheduling request, and that "presenting coverage of its demand as support for that demand is manipulation."
He concluded his post by saying Real Madrid's leadership "has embraced manipulation and falsehoods, including in its official statements and posts," and that questions about its sources, accusations and match scheduling had "remained unanswered since October 16." "Every day, they provide a clearer illustration of what I denounced," he wrote.
