Real Madrid among La Liga’s biggest VAR losers last season

Real Madrid among La Liga’s biggest VAR losers last season The last two seasons have not gone exactly as planned for Real Madrid. Despite having one of the very best teams in the world, the Merengues were unable to win any of their desired titles during these two consecutive seasons, and thus saw the departures of three coaches, Carlo Ancelotti, Xabi Alonso, and Alvaro Arbeloa . The pain of these last two seasons was magnified for the white club’s fans by their record against their arch-rivals, FC Barcelona, against whom, they won only 1 of their 8 games. While the team clearly needed to improve its performances, Real Madrid were clearly also not helped by VAR, especially in La Liga, during these two last seasons. This is clear from a report from Diario AS , which has compared how VAR intervened against the two El Clasico teams last season. The report notes that both teams had an equal number of VAR interventions going against them, i.e., 11. However, these interventions cost the Merengues 5 points, while taking only a single point from the Blaugranes. These five points were lost in two games. The first one was against Girona at Montilivi, with Alonso in charge, when a goal from Kylian Mbappe was ruled out for handball, thus taking away 2 points from their hands. The second was against Osasuna at El Sadar, in which VAR first gave the hosts a penalty for a foul by Courtois, and then overturned the referee’s decision to rule out a goal from Budimir. Thus, Osasuna won that game 2-1, instead of losing 0-1, and got another three points from the Merengues. While definitely painful, even without these VAR calls, Real Madrid would still not have been able to win La Liga. However, this was not the case in the 2024-25 season, when VAR took away 7 points from Real Madrid, and gave Barcelona 5 points, and thus took the league title away from the white club. Similarly, Real Madrid (4) was only behind Elche (3) as the team with the least amount of VAR calls in their favor, while Barcelona (11) was behind only Athletic Club (12) as the team with most VAR calls in their favor.