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When LaLiga president Javier Tebas took to X last Friday to compare Real Madrid’s management to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, it set the Spanish soccer world alight.
Tebas’s statement was aimed at two journalists who write for the online Spanish publication El Debate, Tomás González Martín and Jesús Urdiola, whom he accused of carrying water for Real Madrid’s leadership in recent articles. Tebas said the journalists belong to an “orchestra of mouthpieces” directed by Madrid, the most prominent among them being Real Madrid TV.
“That method recalls propaganda mechanisms exploited by Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda: systematic repetition, construction of an enemy, and subordination of facts to the narrative,” Tebas wrote in Spanish. “The comparison is with those propaganda techniques, not with an ideology or, of course, with the Madridista fanbase.”
Real Madrid responded with its own lengthy statement, calling on Tebas to immediately resign for his “deeply offensive, morally repugnant, and institutionally undignified” comments.
The club also went into detail defending the substance of its claims that Tebas was ridiculing. It slammed Tebas for his handling of the Negreira case, a scandal involving Barcelona paying $7.9 million to José María Enriquez Negreira, the former vice president of Spain’s Technical Committee of Referees.
Since the initial back-and-forth Friday, both sides have only further dug into their positioning. Tebas has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on his analogy, repeatedly emphasizing that it referred to tactics rather than ideology and posting an extensive list of other figures who have made Goebbels comparisons.
Madrid, meanwhile, released a second club statement titled “The international press, outraged by Tebas’s words, is calling for his resignation.” Tebas pointed out that the vast majority of citations in the statement reference Real Madrid’s own demand, rather than any independent viewpoint.
While the war of words between Tebas and Madrid has reached a fever pitch, it is little surprise to see LaLiga’s president and its most storied club trading rhetorical blows. Since Tebas took office in 2013, he has frequently feuded with Madrid president Florentino Pérez, and their relationship has only become more frosty in recent years.
To understand how Tebas reached a point of steadfastly standing behind a comparison between Real Madrid and an infamous Nazi war criminal, it is worthwhile to examine the most critical flashpoints in his long-running discord with the club.
The Super League
Tebas is ironically a lifelong Madrid fan, saying in 2015 that he supported the club as a boy and attended at least 27 El Clásicos (the famed rivalry match between Madrid and Barcelona).
However, after two years of what he described as a healthy working relationship with Pérez, the two men began to clash in private negotiations over a new TV rights deal, and animosity grew.
In 2021, Pérez spearheaded a daring breakaway from UEFA to launch a new European Super League with 11 other elite European clubs. Following widespread backlash and fan protests, nine of the clubs withdrew within three days, leaving just Madrid, Barcelona, and Juventus. During the Super League fallout, Tebas was quick to excoriate Pérez.
“Florentino Pérez has been clueless since December and since yesterday he’s been very lost,” Tebas said when approached on the street by Spanish television program El Chiringuito. “I think he’s a great construction businessman but a disaster of a president.”
Pérez continued to cling onto the Super League idea long after most clubs had abandoned it, saying in 2023 that it was “more necessary than ever” and calling the state of Spanish football “worrying.” Tebas hit back by saying, “Real Madrid came to destroy [football].”
Private Equity Deal
Tebas and Pérez again clashed over “Boost LaLiga,” a plan signed in late 2021 to sell off 8.2% of the league’s sponsorship and broadcasting revenue for the next 50 years to private equity firm CVC for over $2 billion.
Thirty-seven of 42 first and second division Spanish clubs voted in favor of the proposal, but Madrid, Barcelona, and Athletic Club were among the five that opposed it. Pérez argued the transaction was illegal, as it expropriated club assets and stripped the clubs of financial autonomy.
At Madrid’s annual assembly in 2023, Pérez went scorched earth on LaLiga, calling the private equity deal a “scourge on Spanish football.”
“The issue that most concerns us, and for which we have to take very strong measures, is the repeated actions of LaLiga against the interests of Real Madrid,” Pérez said. “These actions have a single objective: to attack the financial assets of our club.”
Tebas responded in an X post accusing Pérez of lying about several issues. He said he believed Pérez would remove him as LaLiga president if he had the power, and encouraged Spanish clubs to vote against electing Real Madrid to the delegate commission, LaLiga’s governing body.
Madrid and Athletic Club filed a joint lawsuit seeking to enjoin the deal, which has yet to be fully resolved. A court first ruled against the two clubs in 2024, and in June, the Madrid Provincial Court dismissed their appeal.
Madrid resolved to appeal the decision to Spain’s Supreme Court, arguing the deal “directly [impacts] the management model of audiovisual rights, the economic framework of LaLiga, and the legitimate rights and interests of all clubs participating in the competition.”
The Negreira Case
Perhaps no issue has provoked more animosity between Madrid and LaLiga than the Negreira case, the scandal concerning payments from Barcelona to the former vice president of Spain’s Technical Committee of Referees.
In March 2023, both UEFA and Spanish prosecutors announced they were launching investigations into the case. Barcelona acknowledges that it paid nearly $8 million to companies tied to Negreira between 2001 and 2018, but the club maintains that the payments were solely for refereeing reports and scouting videos it contracted Negreira to produce.
A Spanish court decided in 2024 not to pursue bribery charges against Barcelona, but a criminal investigation into the club and Negreira for corruption and false business records remains ongoing.
Earlier this month, Madrid sent troves of documents to UEFA which it said contained evidence of “extensive documentation and evidence regarding events of extraordinary seriousness, which directly affect the integrity of the competition and confidence in the refereeing system.” UEFA confirmed it will assess the documents as part of its ongoing investigation.
Pérez has accused Tebas of sweeping the case under the rug. In May, he said in an interview that Madrid was the only party to file a serious complaint in the case, while “LaLiga filed a complaint and did nothing.” Tebas denied that charge, saying the league assisted the prosecutor’s office before Madrid.
“An observation for those of us who know the real Florentino in private: in Tuesday’s press conference we saw the authentic Florentino … with some pill to lie better,” Tebas wrote on X.
Refereeing Controversies
Madrid has also alleged systemic refereeing bias against the club, with scant evidence. Following two contentious decisions in a 1–0 loss to Espanyol in February 2025, Madrid filed a formal complaint to the Spanish football federation.
“The events that took place in this match have exceeded any margin of human error or refereeing interpretation,” the club wrote. “What happened at the RCDE Stadium represents the culmination of a completely discredited refereeing system, in which the decisions against Real Madrid have reached a level of manipulation and adulteration of the competition that can no longer be ignored.”
Tebas ridiculed the club for its complaint and criticized Madrid’s television network, Real Madrid TV, for only covering refereeing decisions that go against the team in order to paint a one-sided picture.
“They have built up an exaggerated tale of victimization that is completely baseless with, in my opinion, the goal of undermining the competition,” Tebas told reporters. “It is completely over the top. They have lost their minds.”
Several similar incidents have played out over the last 18 months, with Madrid repeatedly protesting refereeing decisions. Before the 2025 Copa del Rey final, the match’s referee broke down in tears over the intense scrutiny he had been subjected to by Real Madrid TV, which accused him of being biased against the club.
In September, the Technical Committee of Referees admitted to an error in Real Madrid’s 2–1 loss to Atlético Madrid after Lee Kang-in was not sent off for a challenge on Federico Valverde. Tebas responded to an article in El Debate accusing the league of conspiring against Madrid by writing that the club was engaged in “permanent conspiracy,” and Madrid formally called for him to step down in a statement.
On Sunday, as Madrid cruised to a 4–1 win over Sevilla in its first match since Tebas’s explosive comments, fans held up a banner reading: “It’s not football, it’s Tebas and Negreira.”
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