Real Madrid have demanded the immediate resignation of La Liga president Javier Tebas after he compared the club’s media strategy to Nazi propaganda.
Tebas made the comments on Friday in a post on X, accusing Real Madrid’s management of directing an “orchestra of mouthpieces” with Real Madrid TV leading the criticism of referees.
He wrote that the club’s method is to “select the plays that suit them, repeat the grievance, feed the suspicion, and point fingers at the enemies.”
He added, “That method recalls propaganda mechanisms exploited by Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda.”
Tebas later clarified that his comparison was about “propaganda techniques, not with an ideology or, of course, with the Madridista fanbase.”
Real Madrid rejected the clarification and issued a strongly worded statement on Friday.
The club said it was “absolutely intolerable and extraordinarily serious that someone holding two positions of utmost responsibility in Spanish football resorts to a comparison with the propaganda methods of the Nazi regime.”
It added, “The clarification that it doesn’t refer to Nazi ideology doesn’t alleviate the deeply offensive, morally repugnant and institutionally undignified character of his statements.”
Real Madrid demanded that Tebas resign both as president of La Liga and as vice-president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation.
The statement also linked the row to the Negreira case, involving payments by Barcelona to companies linked to former refereeing chief Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, and said the club had approached UEFA directly for a full investigation.
This is not the first time the two sides have clashed. Real called for Tebas to step down in September after he described their complaints about refereeing as a “smokescreen.”
Tebas, who has been La Liga president since 2013, responded on Friday that he has “lost count of the number of times, in 13 years, the Real Madrid directors have asked for my resignation.”
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