Spain's Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) said on Wednesday that the video assistant referee should have stepped in over the penalty awarded to Kylian Mbappé in Real Madrid's 3-0 win at Racing Club, according to beIN SPORTS. The committee described the decision as a clear and obvious mistake by the on-field official. The ruling came in the CTA's weekly review segment, 'Tiempo de Revisión', which examines contentious calls from the latest rounds of Spanish league football.
Why it matters
The CTA's public assessments carry weight in Spain because they set an official interpretation of the laws for referees, clubs and broadcasters. When the committee says VAR should have acted, it effectively confirms that a match-changing decision was wrong — even though the result stands. For Real Madrid, the verdict is largely academic: the penalty came early in a game the club went on to win comfortably. For Racing, it supports the home side's complaints at the time. More broadly, the case adds to the running debate in Spanish football about when video review should override the referee on the pitch, and how narrow that threshold should be.
What happened in the tenth minute
According to beIN SPORTS, the incident came in the 10th minute of the matchday 11 fixture. Referee José Luis Munuera awarded a penalty after Mbappé brought the ball under control inside the area and attempted to move away from his marker. The CTA's account states that Racing defender Prati placed an arm across the forward without using any force.
The committee's conclusion, as reported by beIN SPORTS, was blunt: the challenge did not meet the bar for a foul. The CTA found no causal link between the defender's action and any impediment to the attacker, calling it a clear and manifest error and stating that VAR ought to have intervened. The penalty gave Real Madrid a 1-0 lead, and the visitors finished with a 3-0 victory. beIN SPORTS notes that the call drew strong objections from the home team after the match.
Other calls reviewed on the same programme
The CTA used the same segment to rule on several other incidents, and its judgments were not uniformly critical of video officials.
In Getafe's 3-1 win over Sevilla, the committee backed the on-field referee over a disallowed goal. With the score at 1-1 in the 73rd minute, referee Víctor García ruled out what would have been Getafe's second goal because of an earlier foul by Andrés García on Manu Bueno, flagged by the assistant. The CTA said the forward's arm made contact with the defender's face and characterised the episode as one with a high degree of interpretation, meaning the referee's original call should stand and VAR should have stayed out of it. Under this reading, the video team was right not to intervene.
In the Basque derby, where Athletic Club beat Real Sociedad 2-1, the CTA addressed the penalty that put the Bilbao side 2-1 ahead in the 46th minute, awarded for a challenge by Aramburu on Nico Williams. According to beIN SPORTS, the committee said VAR confirmed the decision using data from Kinexon tracking technology. The system recorded a final touch of the ball by Nico Williams and no further contact afterwards, and at the moment of that last recorded touch there was a gap between the defender's boot and the ball. The CTA's reasoning was conditional: had Aramburu cleared the ball, no penalty would have followed, but the technology indicated he did not. On that basis, the video review was justified.
The committee also supported VAR's involvement in Villarreal's 0-1 defeat to Espanyol, where referee José María Sánchez overturned Roberto's goal for Espanyol in the 48th minute. The CTA said that with the ball out of play, Roberto clearly pulled Pau Navarro's shirt, restricting his movement and removing him from the defensive action. It judged the offence a foul plus a yellow card for unsporting behaviour, and a clear and manifest error by the referee that VAR was correct to correct.
Lower-division decisions also assessed
The review extended to matchday 12 of LaLiga Hypermotion, the second tier. The CTA found that VAR acted properly in Real Sociedad B's 1-0 win over Girona by awarding a penalty and sending off David López for a serious foul involving excessive force and a risk of injury. It also endorsed the red card shown to Corpas in Albacete's 2-1 victory over Sabadell for kicking an opponent in the head with excessive force. In Burgos' 1-1 draw with Castellón, the committee said VAR was right to leave alone the referee's decision to dismiss Matías Orozco for a challenge involving excessive force, again citing a high interpretive load. The findings were reported by beIN SPORTS and attributed to EFE.
What to watch
The CTA's rulings do not change results, so the focus now shifts to how Spanish refereeing bodies apply this standard to similar arm-across challenges in the coming matchdays, and whether clubs cite the Mbappé case in their own appeals and complaints.
