The Madrid Derby: A Voice from Catalonia Clears Lee Kang-in, While the Real Error Belongs to Another Name

Mundo Deportivo hit the newsstands in Barcelona with a commentary carrying the byline of a former referee, Montero, and it needed only a single sentence to land its verdict: Lee Kang-in's challenge on Federico Valverde did not warrant a sending-off. Across the peninsula, Real Madrid's hierarchy had still not cooled down after a 1-2 defeat to Atletico Madrid at the Metropolitano. Their anger had grounds to exist: a penalty, a red card, and a card reassignment that forced even close followers of the game to go back and reread the Laws.

I watched this derby at four in the morning, Shanghai time. Outside the window the city was still lit, and through my headphones the Metropolitano crowd rolled back with every contested duel. Fourteen years of covering football across two very different cultures taught me something fairly simple: derbies like this do not end at the final whistle. They end in the newsroom. This time, the newsroom spoke from Catalonia, not Madrid.

The heat does not fade with the whistle

Goal.com reported that anger swept through Real Madrid after the match, along with a public demand that Lee Kang-in should have been dismissed. That is an understandable reaction from a side that has just lost a derby, but it is also an organised one: a message pushed out at precisely the moment public opinion was hottest. In fourteen years of writing about football, I have learned that collective reactions of this kind rarely come from one irritated individual. They are calculated to become long-term pressure on the refereeing committee.

The game at the Metropolitano was a textbook physical Madrid derby. Both teams entered it unwilling to surrender territory, and the price was a run of heavy challenges: Lee Kang-in, Marc Pubill, Jude Bellingham, Álex Baena. Referee Ortiz Arias ran the match with VAR Trujillo in support. The final scoreline tilted 2-1 toward Atletico Madrid, but the aftermath tilted toward Real Madrid.

Here I need to pause on source quality, because that is a working principle for me. The aggregated report in my hands describes Lee Kang-in as an Atletico Madrid player who tackled Valverde. In reality, Lee Kang-in is not on Atletico Madrid's books. The card sequence involving Bellingham and a player named Romero is also ambiguous, and it is unclear whether it was a mistaken-identity correction or a full re-evaluation of the challenge. Speed makes a story hot, but only verification keeps a reputation. I am keeping the legal analysis below intact, while flagging clearly the points that need to be checked against the original match report before being cited.

Law 12 and a line thinner than a hair

IFAB's Law 12 splits fouls into three tiers. Careless means no card. Reckless means a yellow. Excessive force or serious foul play means a red. The line between the second and third tiers does not sit in whether the player made contact with an opponent's leg, nor in whether the opponent rolled around. It sits in the speed of the approach, the point of contact, the direction of the force, and the tackler's level of control.

Montero positions the Lee Kang-in challenge as a yellow-card offence only. That is a threshold judgement, not a procedural error. The distinction matters enormously because it determines the fate of the case. A procedural error can be reviewed, criticised and punished with a demotion from high-profile fixtures. A threshold judgement is almost impossible to overturn, because two referees can watch the same challenge and reach two different card decisions while both survive a committee hearing.

Based on my experience tracking hundreds of similar contested duels across European and Asian football, disciplinary panels almost always side with the referee when an incident sits in this grey zone. They only act on clear errors of identification, positioning, or the failure to punish a situation that must be punished. Lee Kang-in's challenge, as Montero reads it, falls into the first category. The 2026 bench was cold, but its sources ran hotter than any front line. I remember the feeling of waiting on a decision that once cost me nearly four thousand followers on Twitter simply because I posted before verifying. That lesson applies here exactly: a fiercely disputed challenge is not necessarily a wrongly officiated one.

The Huijsen case and football's safety net

While public opinion piled onto Lee Kang-in, the genuinely pivotal moment belonged to Dean Huijsen. The centre-back fouled an Atletico player who was through on goal, and the outcome was a penalty plus a red card. Montero confirms this was the correct decision.

The reason lies in the provision the trade calls double jeopardy. Inside the box, if a defender commits a foul that denies an obvious goal-scoring opportunity but makes a genuine attempt to play the ball, the punishment is reduced to a yellow card plus the penalty. The principle is that no one should be punished twice for a single act. But if that defender makes no attempt to play the ball, and instead blocks, pulls or chops the man, the exception does not apply. Penalty and red card stand.

In the Huijsen incident, the referee determined that the defender had no chance of playing the ball. The double punishment is therefore the rule-compliant outcome, and VAR simply confirmed it. This was the procedural high point of the match, and it also says something about how Real Madrid defend. A centre-back sent off for denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity is usually the consequence of a back line stretched and attacked with long balls or through-balls in behind. Atletico Madrid have stayed loyal to that mechanism against Real Madrid for several seasons: cede territory, wait for the error, then strike into the space behind a high line.

That is why I believe the genuine tactical story of this derby is not the disputed red card, but Real Madrid once again exposing a weakness that has been on record for a long time. The goal conceded and the dismissal are only the visible consequence of a structural problem.

VAR did its job, and that is the problem

Both VAR interventions in this match were procedurally correct. The first corrected a card error. The second upgraded a missed red-card offence. The VAR protocol only permits intervention in four categories: goals, penalties, red cards and mistaken identity. Both interventions fall inside those categories, at the clear-and-obvious-error threshold.

So why is the debate still burning?

Because the card sequence involving Bellingham and the player named Romero leaves a crack in the viewer's experience. If it was a mistaken-identity fix, audiences understand immediately. If it was a full re-evaluation of the challenge, audiences need an explanation television did not provide. In modern football, the feeling of consistency matters as much as accuracy. A correct decision that is never explained will be remembered as a wrong one.

This is exactly where the industry is shifting. Across several major European leagues, public pressure to release the audio of referee-VAR exchanges has grown after every high-profile incident. No quantified commercial data in this source indicates a specific impact, but the direction is clear: audience trust is becoming a broadcast asset, and it must be managed with transparency rather than conclusions alone.

The real error belongs to Álex Baena

This is where I break from the crowd.

The most defensible procedural criticism of this match has nothing to do with Lee Kang-in. It concerns the failure to caution Álex Baena for persistent infringement. Law 12 is explicit: a player who repeatedly commits fouls must be cautioned, even when the individual challenges are not severe enough to merit a card on their own. This is the most neglected provision in modern football, because it requires the referee to remember and to count, rather than merely react to each incident.

A referee who overlooks it is quietly losing control of the game. Offenders realise the cost of their behaviour is lower than the cost of restraint, and the match drifts in a physical direction. This is what the trade calls keeping cards in the pocket too long, a risk-averse early approach that later produces inconsistency. That is a reviewable error, a punishable one, and a far more interesting discussion than one challenge sitting between two thresholds.

If you ask me what should be noted by Spain's refereeing technical committee after this match, my answer is not the card issued over Lee Kang-in. It is the list of fouls that never became a card for Baena.

Diego Simeone and the temperature in the technical area

The report also notes Diego Simeone being cautioned for his reaction toward the fourth official. For a coach who has been bound to Atletico Madrid for many seasons, this is nothing new. It reflects a working style built on continuous pressure on the officiating team, especially in derbies where every decision carries weight.

At points the match had to be paused for the referee to calm the technical area. That is a sign of a high-temperature environment, and a sign that the boundary between legitimate protest and excessive reaction is being pushed to its limit. For a coach whose career is secure and whose voice carries in the dressing room, a caution brings no professional risk. It simply adds another layer of pressure on the man with the whistle. The summer of 2026 brought no contract, but it brought a lesson sealed with patience. What I learned that year is that the weaker party in a confrontation is not the one with the least power, but the one with the fewest options. A referee in a derby is the man with the fewest options.

The Catalan voice is not accidental

Mundo Deportivo, a Barcelona-based outlet, publishing a former referee's column defending a decision that favoured Atletico Madrid is not a neutral editorial choice. Within the media triangle of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Catalonia, every commentary carries a layer of positioning. Readers of that outlet process the affair not merely as a disputed Madrid derby, but as an illustration of Real Madrid demanding more than the Laws allow.

Putting a former referee on the page, with a conclusion that the challenge merited only a yellow, is a way of building a credentialed counterweight. It does not extinguish the anger in Madrid, but it gives neutral observers an anchor to say the story is not one-sided. This is a communications technique, not a conspiracy. And in my experience, counterweights of this kind tend to work better than people assume.

The opinion cycle will outlive the result

The 2-1 result in Atletico Madrid's favour is a fact that cannot be changed. But the memory of the match is still being shaped, and most of that shaping happens off the pitch. When a match is decided amid several controversial interventions, the opinion cycle tends to run longer than usual rather than fading after one matchday.

The heaviest pressure sits on referee Ortiz Arias. The level is high, the source is Real Madrid, and the consequence may be a reduced frequency of high-profile appointments over a period. This is the refereeing bodies' natural defensive mechanism: when a name becomes the focal point, they rotate to cool things down. It is not a formal sanction, but its career effect is equivalent.

The second pressure point sits on Real Madrid itself. When a major club publicly voices grievance, it is investing in a long-term campaign. That campaign may win an advantage in future matches, or it may backfire if referees begin to treat their players with heightened caution.

The third sits on VAR. Two interventions in a single derby is a figure that invites scrutiny, even when both were protocol-correct.

The next dominoes

If Real Madrid formalise a complaint, Spain's refereeing technical committee will have to respond in writing, and the debate will move from commentary into policy. If Ortiz Arias is removed from a major fixture within the next two matchdays, that will be a signal that the pressure worked. If the debate over releasing VAR audio is reopened in La Liga, this derby will be recorded as a milestone that accelerated reform, rather than a match that faded from memory.

I do not think Real Madrid will win this fight. But I think they will change something about how their next derbies are officiated. And that was always the real objective.