Mourinho VAR penalty questions dominated Real Madrid’s Champions League build-up on Monday, and by the evening Spain’s refereeing body had answered them — not in his favour. Jose Mourinho used his pre-Inter press conference to demand an explanation for why Kylian Mbappe’s spot-kick at La Cartuja was not ordered to be retaken. The Comite Tecnico de Arbitros, per Mundo Deportivo, is holding firm that the officials got it right.
The Mourinho VAR penalty complaint in full
Madrid’s first defeat of the season, at Real Betis, left more than a dent in the table. Mbappe’s penalty was kept out by Alvaro Valles, and Los Blancos believe the kick should have been taken again because of the position of Betis defender Marc Bartra as the Frenchman struck it. Referee Alejandro Hernandez Hernandez did not order a retake. Neither did the VAR official, Javier Iglesias Villanueva.
Mourinho, speaking to Marca and the assembled media, did not dress it up. “Why was it not retaken? Because the VAR does not know the laws, or because he did not want to?” he asked. “If the VAR did not order a retake because he did not know the laws, he has to go home — and if he did not want to, that is even worse. And why did the VAR not call the referee? It is a strange thing.”
Then the sting, delivered with a politeness that was not politeness at all: “I want to go in the direction of honesty and think that he did not know the laws.”
What the laws actually say
The problem for Madrid is that the rulebook is unusually specific here. Under the IFAB Laws of the Game, a penalty is retaken for encroachment by a team-mate of the goalkeeper only if that encroachment clearly impacts the kicker, or if the encroaching player plays or challenges for the ball and thereby prevents a goal or a goalscoring attempt.
There is a second clause that matters just as much. If a player is in the air at the moment of the restart, their position is judged by where their feet would be projected on the ground. Mundo Deportivo reports that the CTA, applying both that wording and the CARD refereeing manual it introduced this season, considers Hernandez Hernandez and the VAR to have been correct — and the VAR especially so for declining to intervene.
In other words: Madrid have a grievance, but not obviously a case. That distinction has been a recurring feature of the club’s running friction with Spanish officials this season.
The Vinicius yellow card that annoyed Mourinho more
The penalty was not the only thing filed away. Vinicius Junior was booked after the final whistle in Seville, and Marca published the Movistar Plus footage of the moment: the No. 7, wearing the armband that night — Federico Valverde is Madrid’s club captain for 2026/27 — approaching the referee, a heated exchange, and the card produced while Vinicius was still insisting on his right to ask.
“Why does the Real Madrid captain, Vinicius, get a yellow card?” Mourinho said. “He walks towards the referee and before he gets there he has already been shown the yellow. For what reason? We are always told that the captain can ask the referee for explanations.”
Hernandez Hernandez’s match report is less romantic. It records that Vinicius was cautioned for “making observations of a technical nature regarding one of my decisions once the match had finished, while still on the field of play”.
Why he aired it now
Mourinho chose a Champions League eve to relitigate a league defeat, which is rarely an accident. He was careful to insist the dressing room had moved on — “I saw them dead in the dressing room in Seville, and today perfectly normal” — while making sure nobody in Spanish football forgets the grievance before the next domestic assignment.
The Bernabeu, meanwhile, has a European night to get to. Details of timings and coverage are in our Real Madrid vs Inter kick-off time and TV guide. Whether the CTA’s verdict closes the argument or merely dates it is, on this manager’s record, not much of a question.
