Despite the referees admitting the error: the appeals committee shocks Athletic Bilbao ahead of the Barcelona clash
They admitted their mistake but refused to do him justice
A shocking decision has entrenched an unprecedented split within the Spanish refereeing system. The Appeals Committee refused to overturn the sending-off of Yuri Berchiche, even though the official "time for review" video acknowledged that the referee had erred and that VAR should have intervened, just hours before Barcelona's fixture.
The newspaper "Mundo Deportivo" obtained the full decision of the Appeals Committee regarding the sanction imposed on Athletic Bilbao defender Yuri Berchiche. The ruling shocked the Basque club and provoked wide-ranging legal controversy.
This morning the committee rejected the appeal against the decision to suspend Yuri for one match, following his sending-off last Saturday by referee Soto Grado. The move angered both player and club, especially after the "time for review" video released last Tuesday acknowledged a clear refereeing error and confirmed the need for VAR intervention, with referee Valentín Pizarro operating the technology.
Athletic Bilbao had submitted, in due time and form, an appeal requesting the cancellation of the player's card, citing the referees' committee video itself. They explicitly demanded the "cancellation of the disciplinary committee decision issued on 25 August 2026 in case number 2627_O_0004 and a declaration that there was a clear and fundamental error in the sending-off of Yuri Berchiche", and consequently the cancellation of all disciplinary consequences, including the one-match suspension.
Crucially, the club leaned on the admission of the Technical Committee of Referees itself in the video, which declared for disciplinary purposes that "the action did not deny a clear goalscoring opportunity, and that the official technical opinion holds that a direct free kick without a card is the appropriate action".
The shock of the justification: the video is educational only
But the Appeals Committee completely demolished this argument. Its ruling stated that accepting the "time for review" video as new evidence "does not determine its degree of importance, nor does it mean that its conclusions are binding on this committee".
A previous ruling by the Administrative Court for Sport backed them up. The committee cited it to argue that the programme has "an informational, educational and instructive purpose only, aimed at explaining refereeing decisions and enhancing understanding of the rules of the game", and that "there is no legal provision establishing a relationship of dependency between the subsequent assessments of the Technical Committee of Referees and the referees' reports, nor does it bind the disciplinary bodies to the opinions contained in the programme".
The programme, the committee added, "has a purely educational purpose, and therefore does not analyse all controversial plays but rather analyses some of them at random".
The linguistic trick: a clear error
The committee went even further, drawing a line between the terms. It affirmed that the phrase "clear and obvious error" used in the referees' video falls within the technical assessment of the referee's performance and the criterion for VAR intervention, while the phrase "clear material error" set out in Articles 27.3 and 137.2 of the disciplinary code is "the exceptional legal basis that permits the cancellation of a refereeing decision".
It explained: "The use of a similar phrase in the technical field does not automatically establish the existence of the required legal basis. To accept otherwise would mean granting binding effect to the subsequent decision of the Technical Committee of Referees, which is not recognised by the federation's regulations and was explicitly rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport".
Its conclusion was blunt. The evidence presented shows "a technical divergence in the referee's decision, not a clear objective contradiction", and "the existence of another possible interpretation, even if issued by the Technical Committee of Referees, is not sufficient to rebut the presumption of veracity that protects the referee's decision".
Rejection of the double punishment argument
Athletic Bilbao's "double sporting harm" argument also fell flat. The committee explained that "the numerical disadvantage during the match is a direct result of the referee's decision, while the subsequent suspension stems from the disciplinary system. We are not dealing with two disciplinary sanctions for the same act, but with consequences of a different nature".
So the committee rejected Athletic Bilbao's appeal and upheld in full the disciplinary committee's decision of 25 August 2026, including the one-match suspension of Yuri Berchiche and the fines resulting from it. The club cannot even submit a request for a precautionary suspension before the Administrative Court for Sport.
