Real Madrid has demanded the immediate resignation of LaLiga president Javier Tebas after he compared the club's media operation to the propaganda methods of Nazi Germany's Joseph Goebbels. The explosive exchange, which began with a lengthy post on X on October 16, 2026, has deepened one of the bitterest feuds in Spanish football.
What Tebas said
Tebas was responding to articles by two journalists in the Spanish newspaper El Debate, which suggested he and LaLiga were acting against Real Madrid's interests. In a long post on X, he accused the writers of acting as the club's mouthpieces — directly addressing one of them, Tomás González-MartÃn, with the line: "You seem like a parrot, but with a keyboard."
He then turned on the club's in-house channel: "Real Madrid's management directs an orchestra of mouthpieces and Real Madrid TV leads the singing," he wrote. "Their score is always the same: select the plays that suit them, repeat the grievance, feed the suspicion, and point fingers at the enemies. That method recalls propaganda mechanisms exploited by Goebbels: systematic repetition, construction of an enemy, and subordination of facts to the narrative."
Tebas added a caveat: "The comparison is with those propaganda techniques, not with an ideology or, of course, with the Madridista fanbase."
Real Madrid's furious response
Hours later, the club issued a lengthy five-point statement calling for Tebas to step down both as LaLiga president and as vice-president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF).
"Real Madrid C.F. considers it absolutely intolerable and extraordinarily serious that someone holding two positions of utmost responsibility in Spanish football resorts to a comparison with the propaganda methods of the Nazi regime to discredit our club, its management, and its television," the statement read. "The clarification that he is not referring to Nazi ideology does not mitigate the deeply offensive, morally repugnant, and institutionally unworthy nature of his statements."
The club added that Tebas's "repeated conduct shows a lack of neutrality, respect and impartiality incompatible with his institutional responsibilities," and vowed to keep defending its rights and "the necessary regeneration of Spanish football." Tebas has since accused Real Madrid of trying to "destroy" LaLiga.
A feud years in the making
The row is the latest chapter in a long-running conflict. In September, Real Madrid called for a new LaLiga president after Tebas dismissed the club's complaints about refereeing decisions as a "smokescreen" for shortcomings on the pitch. Real Madrid TV regularly broadcasts videos highlighting refereeing decisions the club believes went against it, and Tebas has long criticized the channel's coverage of officiating. The two sides have also clashed bitterly since the club's involvement in the proposed European Super League, and over the refereeing corruption investigation known as the Negreira case.
Tebas, 64, has led LaLiga since 2013 and was re-elected unopposed in 2023 for a term running to 2027. Neither LaLiga, UEFA, nor the RFEF had issued a formal institutional response as of Saturday. Whether the league's most powerful club can force out its most powerful administrator — or whether this is another rhetorical salvo in a war neither side intends to end — is now the question hanging over Spanish football.
Watch: YouTube coverage of Real Madrid's demand for Javier Tebas's resignation over the Goebbels comparison.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Volatile Reaction (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources: Reuters, Al Jazeera, USA Today, Sports Illustrated