Atletico Madrid have hit back at Jose Mourinho after the Real Madrid head coach used his post-match news conference following the Madrid derby to highlight two incidents he felt should have produced red cards for Atletico.
Mourinho arrived at the news conference on Sunday carrying printouts of screenshots showing the incidents in question, after Real were beaten 2-1 by Atletico. He claimed the hosts should have been handed two red cards in the first half.
“We can skip the press conference because the story of the match is right here,” Mourinho said as he showed the media the printed images on sheets of A4 paper. “Those were two clear red cards. Given the difficulties we faced afterwards playing 11 against 10, we can only imagine what 50 minutes of 11 against nine would have been like. So I’ll just have to limit myself to hugging my players, who gave it their all and played a first half, showed great class and character, setting us up perfectly to win the second half.”
Atletico responded on Monday with two posts on their X account. The first was a video showing a sheet of paper emerging from a printer carrying the words #StopAcosoArbitralYA, meaning “stop referee harassment now”. A second post showed a picture of Mourinho at the news conference with the same message. The response received two million views on X within two hours of being posted.
Real’s own account of the match did not spare the officials either. The match report published on the club’s website said the derby defeat was decided because of “dreadful refereeing” by Ortiz Arias. It was Real’s second defeat of the season, following a 1-0 loss to Real Betis earlier in September.
Diego Simeone, asked to respond to Mourinho’s complaints about the officiating, said he was always respectful of everyone else’s opinions. “I understand that we’re in a privileged position with a lot of public scrutiny, as coaches, and whether it’s Mourinho, Flick, Pellegrini, me, or anyone else, we need to be careful about what we say,” he said. “We have to know how to respect others, the referees, our colleagues. And when someone crosses that line of respect, it’s not right – you can’t cross that line.”
The exchange is not the first time Atletico have used their social media channels to answer their rivals. Simeone’s team posted repeatedly on X this summer to ridicule Barcelona over their pursuit of Atletico’s talisman Julian Alvarez.