Florentino Perez: Real Madrid President

Real Madrid have given hints that they would challenge their disqualification from the Copa del Rey for fielding Russian midfielder Denis Cheryshev in the match against Cadiz midweek.

The Spanish giant gave the indication in  an announcement today on the club’s website, saying that the competition judge acknowledged that Cheryshev was not notified of the ban, arising from the three yellow cards he collected while playing for Villarreal while on loan last season.

“The competition judge acknowledges that Cheryshev was not personally notified about his ban

“Real Madrid C.F. received the competition judge’s decision at 6:17pm CET and after analysing it can verify the acknowledgement that the Spanish Football Federation did not personally notify Cheryshev  about his ban, which is the only way the ban can take effect, as article 41 section two of the Disciplinary Code clearly states. We at Real Madrid C.F. stand by our argument and will take the appropriate action to ensure that the final outcome is favourable for the club.”

The club’s position tallies with point it has been making since Wednesday that it did not knowingly field Cheryshev and that the player and the club ought to have been informed about his ban.

Dumped out of Copa Del Rey: Benitez and Cheryshev at half time of the ill-fated match

Club President on Thursday at a press conference laid out the club’s position and their readiness to challenge the penalty.

Club president, Florentino Perez,  spoke to the media at the Santiago Bernabéu: “In relation to Real Madrid’s fielding of the player Denis Cheryshev in the Copa del Rey match against Cádiz yesterday, and after analysing the events in today’s meeting of the Board of Directors, we wish to state that the one-match ban for accumulating three yellow cards in the Copa del Rey tournament last season, when the player was representing Villarreal, should in our view not take effect, because nobody notified the player of the ban, as is clearly stipulated in article 41 section two of the Spanish Football Federation’s Disciplinary Code, which states: … punitive resolutions will not take effect until the parties concerned have been personally notified“.

“It’s an essential, basic principle of all punitive law that that the punishment does not take effect, and it is as if it did not exist, until the party receiving the punishment is notified”.

“As the player Cheryshev states, nobody notified him of the ban, and for that reason it should not take effect. Real Madrid were not aware of its existence, nobody notified the club of its existence, neither the player nor Villarreal nor the RFEF. The necessity for personal notification was explicitly acknowledged by the Administrative Court for Sport in its recent resolution of 30 January 2015”.

“Even if we accepted that the ban should take effect, which we deny, it must be considered to be automatically wiped out in accordance with the provisions of the final subsection of article 112, paragraph two, section one, which says, and I quote: … in the Campeonato de España / Copa de S. M. El Rey, at the end of the third knockout round, all participants’ existing cycles of cautions will be automatically annulled, and a new cycle shall commence for all participants in the round of 32“.