Why was Julian Alvarez's penalty disallowed? Spot-kick controversy explained

Liam Williams Updated: 02 Apr 25 09:49

Atletico Madrid were controversially knocked out on penalties by Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday night, after Julian Alvarez's spot-kick was controversially overturned.

After Conor Gallagher levelled the tie on aggregate in the first minute of the match, the game went to extra time after Vinicius Jr's penalty cleared the crossbar.

Penalties then loomed in a repeat of the 2016 UEFA Champions League final. Kylian Mbappe and Alexander Sorloth scored the opening penalties for their respective sides, before Jude Bellingham and Alvarez seemed to do the same, but after a VAR review, the Argentine's spot-kick was overturned.

Many fans in the stadium thought their side were in pole position when Lucas Vazquez's effort was saved by Jan Oblak, but when Marcos Llorente clattered the bar, Antonio Rudiger had the opportunity to do what he did against Manchester City last season, duly obliging.

In IFAB's 2024/25 Laws of the Game state: "[A penalty] kick is completed when the ball stops moving, goes out of play or the referee stops play for any offence; the kicker may not play the ball a second time."

The latter part of that particular rule is where Alvarez was deemed to have fallen foul, being adjudged to have kicked the ball twice. While the rules are the rules, however unpopular, much of the controversy has stemmed from the replays not conclusively proving that Alvarez did indeed kick the ball with both feet.

After the match, Atletico boss Diego Simeone said: "I just saw the image of the penalty. The referee said that when Julián stepped and kicked, he touched the ball with his foot, but the ball didn't move. That's something to discuss about whether it was a goal or not, but I'm proud of my players.

"When he plants his foot and kicks, the ball doesn't move even a little bit. But if VAR called it, I've never seen a penalty called by VAR, but it's still valid, and they'll have seen that he touched it. I want to believe they'll have seen that he touched it.

"What did you see? Raise your hand if you think Julian knocked twice. I didn't speak to him."

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