With three days to go before they host Chelsea in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final, Real Madrid muddied a brilliant week in which they had eliminated Barcelona with a thrashing at Camp Nou with a league defeat at the Bernabéu against Villa -real that culminated in a painful incident. After the match, Fede Valverde approached the Villarreal bus and punched the yellow submarine player, who was looking at his mobile phone at the time, in the cheek.
The aggression caused deep indignation in Villarreal and Baena ended up filing a complaint at the police station against Valverde, which is why the case goes to the criminal court and Valverde risks a serious penalty. The Competition Committee does not usually enter ex officio in these matters, but, if it mediates a complaint from the club or the affected player, a file would be opened and the situation would be investigated. There could even be an Anti-Violence sanction.
Real Madrid opted in the institutional field not to comment on the matter and kept silent in its official media. Club sources consider the case "a closed issue because it is a personal matter between Valverde and Baena".
The truth is that, in a week in which the Whites are playing for their future in the Champions League, the last thing Real Madrid wants is to get entangled in a disciplinary issue with their Uruguayan player, who internally they protect seamlessly .
Valverde is not a particularly confrontational or hot-blooded player on the field. He has only been sent off once in his career, in the red he saw for taking Morata in the final of the Spanish Super Cup played in Arabia in 2020.
The incidents between Valverde and Baena already start from the cup play-off, on January 19. The Groguets had a 2-0 advantage and Madrid ended up coming back and winning the game (2-3), the same result but the reverse of yesterday's at the Santiago Bernabéu. Then, in the parking lot of La Cerámica, and according to Madrid sources, Baena mocked Valverde saying "cry now, because your child will not be born", alluding to the problems the Argentine journalist was then having with her pregnancy Mina Bonino, Fede Valverde's romantic partner.
The same sources say that throughout the match at the Bernabéu Baena continued with this type of provocation with Valverde, that when the match ended he went to find Baena where the Villarreal bus was parked and told him: "Say Now what you told me about my son".
Valverde spent yesterday with his family. Madrid sources say that, although he is not proud of his action, he does not regret what he did.
Álex Baena denied Madrid's version with a tweet posted last night on social networks: "It is totally false that I said that", he said.
The dates of the events seem to corroborate the version of the player of the groguet team. When the Cup match was played, neither Mina Bonino's pregnancy nor the complications she suffered were public.
Xisco Nadal, the representative of Villarreal, tweeted last night after the attack: "Valverde, macarró and coward", a message that was later removed from his account. Quique Setién, the Submarí coach, also mocked Real Madrid in the Bernabéu dressing room by imitating the gestures and words of Carlo Ancelotti at Camp Nou. Relations between Real Madrid and Villarreal have been lousy for years.
