Referees Committee to explain decisions after every La Liga matchday | OneFootball

Spanish football is undergoing an overhaul in terms of officiating, and that will continue after the September international break. Some of the most controversial decisions will be analysed in public by the Referees Committee (CTA) going forward.

In the summer, following widespread discontent with the CTA, and vociferous lobbying from Real Madrid, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) decided to dismiss CTA President Luis Medina Cantalejo and VAR Chief Carlos Clos Gomez. In their place arrived Francisco Soto as President, a relative unknown in the higher echelons of Spanish football.

Refereeing decisions to be explained

As reported by Cadena SER, the CTA intends to publicly analyse controversial decisions after each weekend of fixtures. Their information is that a selection of calls, six to nine is mentioned, will be selected every weekend for public analysis by the refereeing body. The decisions will not come solely from La Liga, but also from Segunda and Liga F.

It is not yet clear who will be selecting the decisions to be analysed, but they will not come from the current group of referees involved. The new measure is set to come in after the September international break, which is to say from Matchday 4 onwards.

Recent changes to refereeing

This is the latest adjustment from the CTA under their new leadership. Recently it was announced that referees would only be referred to by their first name and first surname, as players are, rather than by all three names that are traditional in Spanish (first name, father’s surname, mother’s surname).

The decision was taken to humanise the referees – the measure to refer to officials was taken originally in the late 1960s, after a namesake of former dictator General Franco received heavy criticism. The RFEF are also only announcing the designations for each game only a day in advance, to protect officials from pressure in the media, a measure seemingly directed at Real Madrid, after their regular smear pieces that would appear two days before games.