La Liga 2023/24

the xcx wrote:

halamadrid2 wrote:I hope someone buys Nico Williams. He deserves a better career than his brothers

I agree

farfan wrote:

Myesyats wrote:There has always been a systemic favoritism toward RM in on-field decisions, much harder  with VAR because everyone can see the replays and they release audio from the room.

This stat provides insight how field refs tend to allow more goals for RM even if they are obviously invalid (it was evident pre-VAR too btw). That is not to say that there is corruption, bias does not necessarily mean corruption - it could just as easily be subconscious favoritism. Also, the stat would be less credible if RM scored more goals on average but I dont think they do and actually this season even penniless Barca has scored more thus far with plenty of goals disallowed without VAR intervention. They definitely do not score 2-3x more than their rivals.

The capital club is always (or almost always) the sweetheart, you can see it in other countries too.

Obviously we would also need to see decisions where the goal was incorrectly disallowed and then amended by VAR to make a more conclusive assessment but either way a honest conversation about this will never happen because its more convenient to ignore it. If you think favoritism doesnt exist then grow up. And this is just one limb of a gargantuan living and breathing organism.

It's impossible to have an honest conversation when one group is constantly moving the goalposts. For years the biggest controversy was around VAR and its supposed bias towards Madrid. Laporta was railing against it as recently as January . But now all of a sudden we're pivoting to VAR doing its job just fine and is actually exposing referee bias towards Madrid?

And even if we entertain this argument, what exactly are these numbers telling us? Sevilla is one of the lowest scoring teams in the league and creates less than half the chances that Barça creates per game. Are they also benefiting from ref bias? Relative to the potency of their attack, they're actually getting more calls in their favor than Madrid.

It seems like Barça fans are just grasping at any semblance of evidence to keep the "refdrid" narrative going, even if it contradicts claims they were making just months ago (In this case, the claim that VAR is a broken system that only favors Madrid)

All of this leads to the same questions that every rational observer have been asking for the past 15 years: What does Madrid have to show for this alleged favoritism from the refs and league as a whole? Why are Barça fans so hellbent on undermining the integrity of a competition they've dominated for over a decade?  Madrid won a measly 4 titles in 15 years and they haven't been able to defend the title a single time in that period During that same time they've won 5 CLs and even managed to defend the title twice.

According to Barça media and fans, even that modest and frankly embarrassing "success" should have an asterisk next to it. Apparently, Madrid had no business winning La Liga in 2012 despite everything pointing to them being the best team in Europe. The Madrid team that won 3 consecutive Champions Leagues should've won 0 league titles, because Barça were supposedly robbed in 2017. The 2022 title (this is the year Barça media wouldn't shut up about VARdrid) isn't free from these accusations either because even the broke ass post-Messi Barça felt entitled to  wrestling a league title away from a much superior team that went on to win the Champions League