The Spanish federation has published the VAR audio from Racing Santander against Real Madrid on Sunday, and it shows why the referee cancelled the penalty Racing were given against Aurélien Tchouaméni. What it does not explain is why nobody called him to the monitor for the penalty Madrid were given 60 minutes earlier, the one that put them ahead in a 3-0 win.


The penalty Madrid got


On 11 minutes José Luis Munuera Montero gave Madrid a penalty for a contact by Matteo Prati on Kylian Mbappé. Racing's players protested, so did El Sardinero, and Mbappé scored it. The VAR did not intervene.


Racing's coach José Alberto was clear about what he thought of it. "Touching a player is not a foul, it's not a penalty, it's absolutely nothing. In football there is contact," he said. "It really strikes me that there is one person, or several people, at a monitor and they don't call him to review that action."


"VAR came in to make things fairer," he added. "What can't happen is that it's doubly unfair."


The penalty Racing lost


With Madrid 3-0 up, Munuera gave Racing a penalty for a handball by Tchouaméni in a challenge with Prati. This time the VAR, Alvendiz, did call him over. According to the audio published by the federation and reported by El Debate, the exchange went like this.


"José Luis, I recommend a review so you can consider cancelling the penalty you've given, please," Alvendiz said.


Munuera, with José Alberto protesting nearby, replied: "I'm going to look at it, José Alberto. Calm down, I'm going to look at it." At the monitor he said: "I want to see how he plays the ball."


The VAR's reasoning: "We see that the Real Madrid player, Tchouaméni, plays the ball voluntarily first." Under the laws, a player who deliberately plays the ball and then has it rebound onto his arm has not committed an offence. Munuera's decision: "So I'm going with no penalty, and a dropped ball to the goalkeeper."


Former referee Pavel Fernández told El Debate it was an "academic" play, because there was an intention to play the ball first. Even José Alberto accepted the cancellation; his complaint was that the same scrutiny was not applied at 0-0.


Mourinho's reply


José Mourinho did not see a problem with either call. "My opinion is that they protest everything," he said of Racing. "There are a lot of people who don't know the rules. They change them so much."


On the Tchouaméni decision: "It's never a penalty, because of the rebound. When I saw it on the iPad, I thought, if VAR doesn't fall asleep, that's not a penalty." He called Munuera's performance technically very good.


José Alberto had a reply ready for that. "Mou said that when an error favoured him, he would say so," he said. "I can't add much more."


What happens next


The Mbappé penalty is due to be assessed on Tiempo de Revisión, the referees' committee programme that reviews contentious decisions, where the CTA will say whether it was correctly given.


It will not change the result. Madrid were far better on the day, with 22 shots to ten and seven on target to one, and were three up by the 36th minute. But it lands in the middle of a season in which refereeing, and the club's own complaints about it, has rarely been far from Madrid's matches.