Sports
Amidst the evolving developments of the Spanish sporting scene, local federation committees continue to make strict decisions directly affecting the course of domestic competitions and major European clubs. In this context, the Appeal Committee of the Royal Spanish Football Federation upheld a four-match suspension penalty against Brazilian forward Vinicius Junior, which the Disciplinary Committee had previously imposed following his direct red card during the match against Villarreal, after carefully studying and officially rejecting the legal appeal submitted by Real Madrid, which sought to completely cancel the penalty or at least mitigate it. Based on this decisive ruling, it has been officially confirmed that the Brazilian star will miss upcoming fixtures for his team in the Spanish Football League, including strong matches against Sevilla, Barcelona, Racing Santander, and Valencia, and the player will not be able to return to the pitch in the domestic competition until activity resumes after the scheduled international break, specifically during the anticipated match against Celta Vigo on November twenty-first and twenty-second. Meanwhile, current indications show that the Real Madrid management does not intend to surrender to this decision, but rather seriously intends to escalate the entire matter to the Administrative Sports Court in search of additional justice. Real Madrid had submitted a detailed appeal memo directed to the Appeal Committee containing several legal and technical demands, but the competent authority rejected all of them outright. The club's main demands included requesting the cancellation of the two-match suspension penalty resulting from the red card, or alternatively, applying Article 121.1 of the Disciplinary Code instead of relying on Article 130.2, based on the argument that the former article was adopted in previous similar cases involving hair pulling, citing recorded disciplinary precedents, a path that if adopted would have inevitably reduced the suspension period resulting from the red card to just one match. In another aspect of the memo, club officials demanded the cancellation of the additional two-match suspension resulting from protests made by player Vinicius toward referee Diaz de Mera, as the club considered there is no sound legal justification to apply Article 127 of the Disciplinary Code, proposing to apply Article 118.1 instead, which is characterized by flexibility and limits its actual penalty to mere warning. However, the Appeal Committee, after extensive deliberations, announced its complete rejection of all arguments and legal defenses presented by Real Madrid in its memo. Regarding the aspect concerning the red card, the disciplinary body emphasized that there is no clear or gross material error in the match referee's assessment of his field decision. The committee also made sure to keep the two-match suspension penalty in effect, affirming that resorting to applying Article 130.2 was completely sound, attributing this to the fact that the incident leading to the penalty did not occur during physical competition or direct and actual contest for the ball. In response to the club's appeals, the Appeal Committee indicated, regarding the grounds relied upon by the Disciplinary Committee regarding the application of the aforementioned article, that there is no deficiency in the reasons or legal reasoning that warrants canceling the contested decision. Therefore, the suspension penalty set at two matches remains the strict minimum explicitly stipulated in the texts of this disciplinary article.
