No its not. You can't narrow the context to skew the argument, or deflect the argument to Madrid's current behaviour (which isn't worthy of this club). Barca were a magnificent team at the time, no doubt. How did that translate to Europe? Where would they be if not for the Chelsea robbery, or peek a busquets? They would have nothing to show for it outside of the Negreira league. Why the discrepancy? It's easy to be magnificient when you know that when you are down, the ref is there to help. Confidence and momentum are massive things in sport. If the decisions consistently go your way game after game, year after year, its a massive shift in outcome. Mentally it inspires you and destroys the competition. Its actually a shame beause i didn't hate Barcelona, especially Ronaldinho, but that era showed me what they are as a club. I refereed for 10 years, lost friends because i followed the rules and never made a biased call. Did you WATCH, the actual refereering and the momentum shifts that happened so often that on probability you are more likely to win the lotto? They had the referees eating out of their hands. Maybe they just knew how to be friend with them and manipulate them like an artform that no one can emulate, but i doubt it. There is a * against every one of their wins and titles during that era.
I feel we keep going round in circles on this debate but for me what most Negriera doubters keep avoiding is "scope of influence". It quite impossible to have every ref give every call in your favor. Like most corruption rings it starts with a core group that tries to subtly influence a few key moments and then you have an outer group that tries to mimic the behavior to be part of the core group. Yes, Barca had an unstoppable team and we had phases we were practically in shambles. But if we were to say the "scope of influence" was 6 points only. How many leagues in that period were determined by 6 points? I know we cry foul of refs quite often but no ref should stop us from beating a Levante. Its like when we had our Varsity team play our Junior Varsity team - our coach would give the JV team a favorable whistle just to try keep the game competitive but we'd still trounce them. So lets not pretend Barca were not good but that doesn't mean they didn't get a helping hand - a hand they sometimes didn't even need. Fun fact: I found an article written in 2021 pre-Negriera Case being public which was done to analyze if Villarato was something fans complained about or if there was an on field impact. Having looked at all the numbers and comparing to european leagues they thought the numbers were clearly skewed. Now imagine finding out there were payments done in this period as well.
I love how "calls corrected" straight up suggests "wrong calls turned over to their advantage" seemlessly.
RM and Barca had only 3 La Liga games in January not 4, so he played 2 out of 3 games. Well, I guess they only count players who played all the games when selecting the "Team of the Month".
Just for the record, "Peek a busquets" was the game that Mourinho's Inter managed to hold off Barcelona with 10 men from minute 28 after that BS call and advance to the final.
"It's been strange," Antón Meana began, speaking on El Larguero. The Cadena SER journalist contextualized this odd day by wondering why the Real Madrid players, booed for their performance in the last match against Rayo Vallecano, have been able to enjoy a 'mini-vacation'. It all seems to be related to the soft touch of Álvaro Arbeloa, who appears to be increasingly yielding to the interests of the first-team players. "There hasn't been a single group training session where the players have seen each other face-to-face, and I think that's worth sharing with SER listeners , " Meana asserted, expressing surprise that players like Courtois, Carreras, and Huijsen haven't seen each other since last Sunday after the Rayo Vallecano match. "It's strange that they don't share a training space and arrive in shifts as if they were signing new players," Antón Meana criticized. Javi Herráez, a journalist who follows Real Madrid on a daily basis, says that this type of training is also detrimental to substitutes or players who get few minutes, since "they gradually lose interest." For Antón Meana, the current situation at Real Madrid "demands something different" than what was seen at Valdebebas on Wednesday morning, February 4th. Beyond that, "I'm surprised that some players only lasted between an hour and a half and two hours," confesses Antón, who emphasizes the need to apply tactics to this type of training: "We'll have to do some kind of tactical work," he reflects on Cadena SER 's El Larguero program . The Real Madrid board continues to believe that physical conditioning is the squad's biggest weakness. They consider Xabi Alonso's staff to have left a physical "mess" and want to improve this aspect with Pintus starting on day one, as the club has been showing throughout the day on its social media and official channels. However, some pundits, like Dani Garrido, director of Carrusel Deportivo , don't believe the images Real Madrid is trying to project. "Real Madrid's images are pure marketing; they want to stage the idea that today is day one of preseason," Garrido concluded. https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2026...debebas-de-las-ultimas-temporadas-cadena-ser/
🚨 Antonio Pintus is a very important figure as far as Florentino Pérez is concerned.One source at Valdebebas said in recent years that: "Florentino really thinks that Pintus is the secret to winning the Champions League."— @MarioCortegana pic.twitter.com/L998gc0EzM— Madrid Universal (@MadridUniversal) February 5, 2026 What happened last season then because we couldn’t run for shit.
🚨 Both Jude Bellingham and Rodrygo are out for the tie against Benfica. pic.twitter.com/hcJaRY4JlW— Madrid Universal (@MadridUniversal) February 5, 2026
The club and the media think the fans are cattle But hey, the masks are back! That should sort everything out..
Based on the dross we see on the pitch, it’s not surprising that the training (lack thereof) is reflected. It’s not a fixable problem, if this group of players are ok with that.
if we have more penalties s8nce VAR but itbis the opposite before dont you think that also coincided with payments stopoing and/or VAR made it more difficult for refs to influence games?
Thing is, you decide to read it that way because of the team you support. And I'm not saying this personally to you but generally speaking, supporting Real Madrid and thinking we are the team that's treated unfairly from the referees is so far off that I don't even know how to comment on it like @4x4s does. It's really like people have no circle outside of a Real Madrid bubble forum to discuss football.
Right now the media seems to be just spewing all kinds of narratives that is anything but the players attitude.
Yeah, to be honest, Bayern did the same thing with German football for so long that groups formed that basically voted against anything that would benefit them out of spite. They had to come to their senses a little bit because you're already behind even without the crabs in a barrel attitude. I think it's clear Barca and Madrid see a future outside of domestic football though. Everybody sort of expects the current champions league to transform into a Superleague organically at some point.
No Vinicius, no Bellingham, and likely no Rodrygo for the trip to Mestalla to face Valencia. Will be very curious to see who Arbeloa decides to start. I'm expecting something like: Mbappe Gonzalo Mastantuono Guler Tchouameni Camavinga Bench will be pretty thin: Brahim, Ceballos, and the fullbacks
Arbeloa starts whoever the bosses tell him to start. I admired him as an athlete but as a coach he is the extended arm of his bosses.