There is no doubt about the kind of welcome from Jude Bellingham on Wednesday evening by Real Madrid supporters, the Spanish club sees itself as the victim of a referee conspiracy in Laliga and his red card at the weekend has him a champion of them Made cause.
What is much more difficult to predict is how his profession against that dismissal for muttering 'F *** off' with referee Jose Luis Munuera – who has since been bombed with online threats and abuse – received lunch time on Wednesday.
Bellingham received the support of teammate Fede Valverde in the construction of the game on Wednesday evening. “I would never tell a teammate not to protest,” he said. 'Tempers are high when we are in the middle and Jude is a winner, he always wants to fight for things. I love his grit. '
And the coach of Bellingham, Carlo Ancelotti, also closed the ranks around the midfielder of England who points the finger for recent controversies with Spanish referees. “I'm more relaxed about European referee,” he said. “The VAR only intervenes when needed and you have the best referees from every country.”
By the time Bellingham gets on the field against Manchester City, he knows what price he has paid for his different opinions. The disciplinary committee of Spanish football will probably forbid him between two and four games, depending on whether it rules that he has focused an insult directly on the match officer or his argument accepted that it was only an expression of frustration.
Ancelotti gave the hope that his player could still destroy the card, but he will probably lose him for different competitions and there are signs that part of the general admiration that Bellingham gathered in Spain when he first joined Real Madrid for the first time , decreasing.
A sports columnist in the newspaper El Mundo in Spain wrote on Monday that the club should worry about how the 'tense and tense atmosphere they promote is a child who has arrived in a hooligan'.
“Every match that Bellingham plays with fire,” said former midfielder of Barcelona and now television expert Gerard Lopez and claims that Ancelotti should tackle the situation instead of justifying his player's actions.
Bellingham was previously sworn for the referee who sent him away on Saturday. Munuera booked him earlier in the season in a match at home at Espanyol and the midfielder of England was captured by cameras that responded with 'What a Piece of S ***'.
Seven days before his broadcast against Osasuna, Bellingham 'f *** had shouted your husband, f *** off' to the referee's assistant in the Madrid derby and escaped without punishment.
Munuera will have seen images of both incidents before last Saturday's game and it will have conditioned his thinking as soon as Bellingham has spoken the F-word.
Madrid hopes that referee Munuera wrongly stated in his report that Bellingham had said that 'F *** U' will make the broadcast invalid. Last season they used the withdrawn red card on Mason Greenwood to support their business.
Greenwood was sent away by referee Jorge Figueroa who wrote in his report that the player had told him to 'take off'. The appeals committee concluded that the player had only complained about the number of times he had been kicked and said, “One, two, three, four, f ***.” The red was removed.
Referees are partially attacked by all parties in Spain because there have still been no prosecutions about the scandal, revealed in 2023, that Barcelona had paid more than 8 million euros to the vice-president of the Jose Maria referee for a period of 18 years Negreira.
That has left a cloud of suspicion about matching and played in the agenda of Madrid. Real Madrid TV regularly emits videos that are designed to prove that the referee who has to take the lead on their next game, in the past biased them.
And when Real Madrid was beaten 1-0 two weeks ago by Espanyol with the winning goal scored by a player who should have been sent away before, the conspiracy theory went into overdrive.
Madrid sent a letter to the Spanish football federation that complained about 'double standards' against them. When Bellingham protests, he does this with the blessing of the club, while the support of Ancelotti demonstrated again.
In the construction of the game on Wednesday evening, Madrid fans still argued that what Bellingham said did not justify the red. A fan of Osasuna posted on social media: 'Supporters of Manchester City will be in Madrid this week. Approach the first you see and say 'f *** off' and if he tries to touch you, you know it was an honest red card for Bellingham. '
Elsewhere it suggested that David Beckham did during his spell in Real Madrid for joke. In May 2004 he received a straight red for mentioning Linesman Ignacio Fidalgo the 'Son of a WH ***'. He said it in Spanish, so there was no ambiguity or attraction.
So far, Bellingham has chosen to swear in English, but the referees are up to him and that creates a problem for Ancelotti and for the player himself. He can be praised by teammates and supporters, but he will play very little competitive football in the coming month if the ban is long and Manchester City would win on Wednesday evening.
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