A few hours after Real Madrid announced that it would appear as a private prosecution in the ‘Negreira case’, another former referee, Eduardo Iturralde González, revealed some pressure that he himself would have received from Florentino Pérez during his time as a referee and after a Real Madrid match.
Iturralde assured the Cadena SER microphones that Florentino Pérez tried to lock him in a room to pressure him and ask him to whistle for Real Madrid just like Barça. It was in the 2010-11 season after a match against Deportivo de la Coruña.
This confession comes as a defense of Clos Gómez, who according to him is suffering a smear campaign by Real Madrid TV. “It is the modus operandi of this television. Since they are journalists, who calls me to a separate room? Investigate it. So you can see how they try to put pressure on certain people. In a 6-1 game against Deportivo: the game ends, we leave the field and the attendees go out with me. There is a person who puts me in a room and tells me: ‘I only ask you to whistle at me the same as Barça'”, he explained.
The ex-referee, very angry, was blunt in all his statements about it: “He’s from Real Madrid. I ask him to see if he’s making a joke and I tell him that the conversation is over. He wanted to put me alone in the room, but I told him no. Half an hour later the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) already knew about it. I reported it to me, it seemed very serious, but I stayed there. There was nothing. As those of Real Madrid TV are good journalists, they investigate. I’m going to make your job easier: start at the top.”
After being asked a couple of times, Iturralde finally decided to give the name. “It hasn’t happened to me more times, no president has put me in a separate room. I care about the facts. The one who put me in a separate room was Florentino Pérez. I don’t have to hide. There is a CTA report, because I put it in knowledge. So that they see what it is to press. I am not going to hide. There is no corrupt referee, we are above”, he revealed.
For its part, Real Madrid TV has published a video in which it reviews the mistakes that, in its opinion, Iturralde González made against Real Madrid during the 17 seasons that he was a First Division referee. “This is Iturralde González, the referee who has finally taken off his mask and is now dedicated to attacking Real Madrid from the media,” RMTV says in the video.
