La Liga president Javier Tebas criticised three Real Madrid stars, including Kylian Mbappe, on Wednesday for not properly wearing a t-shirt supporting the people of Ceuta, a Spanish territory in north Africa affected by a migration crisis.
Los Blancos trio Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Ibrahima Konate wore a tribute shirt partially rolled up ahead of their 3-2 win at Elche on Tuesday in the Spanish league, which the other players wore normally.
By doing so, it semi-obscured a message reading "we are all Ceutans", referring to the people living in Spain's north African territory.
"We saw three players decide not to wear it - putting it half on is the same as not wearing it... bad, bad," Tebas told reporters.
The initiative for the teams to wear the shirts came from a group of entrepreneurs from the Valencia region. Tebas said it had been approved but not organised by La Liga and was "not a political act of any type".
La Liga teams playing matches not involving clubs from the Valencia region have not been wearing the shirt.
The president of Real Madrid's Ceuta fan club, Miguel Angel Montano, said he was disappointed by the decision from the trio not to wear the shirts properly.
"We were very happy to see (players) wearing the shirts, because we need support, but we were baffled when we saw that these three players covered up the message," Montano told Spanish radio station esRadio.
Villarreal hosted Real Betis on Monday, and both sets of players wore the shirts supporting Ceuta, while Levante players wore the shirt before their game against champions Barcelona on Sunday, but the Catalan side elected not to use it.
HEIGHTENED TENSIONS
The controversy comes amid heightened tensions surrounding Ceuta following a large influx of migrants. Tens of thousands of migrants arrived in Ceuta from Morocco on July 30 and 31.
Most of them returned in the hours following their arrival, but several thousand remained in Ceuta.
Locals have protested regularly as the migrants continue to camp on beaches and sleep in the streets, accusing the Spanish government of abandoning the overwhelmed city amid a humanitarian crisis.
Real Betis and Morocco winger Abde Ezzalzouli defended himself on social media on Tuesday after he was criticised for wearing the shirt.
"I want to make one thing clear - at no point was the shirt referring to the people of Ceuta used with a political objective or out of contempt for my people, the Moroccan people," said Ezzalzouli in a post on Instagram.
The former Barcelona winger described it as a social gesture in support of the population of the city "regardless of their nationality".