Why did Real Madrid troll Pepe Reina after their Copa del Rey comeback against Villarreal?

Real Madrid made it through to the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey after another superb comeback against Villarreal on Thursday. Marco Asensio and Dani Ceballos inspired Los Blancos to a 3-2 victory, with three second-half goals turning the tie around in their favour after they had been 2-0 down at half-time in a feisty encounter, with an incident between Madrid winger Vinícius Júnior and home goalkeeper Pepe Reina catching the eye.

What happened between Vinícius Júnior and Pepe Reina?

As the match entered its crucial final stages, Aïssa Mandi was judged to have fouled the Brazilian, which incensed the Villarreal bench and substitute goalkeeper Reina in particular, who rose to his feet to protest against the decision and Vinícius, who he told to “get up and play” according to (undoubtedly accurate) lip-readers.

Not impressed, the Real Madrid attacker bit back and Reina came out of the dugout to exchange heated words with Vinícius before the free-kick was taken. The 40-year-old would later continue his ‘discussion’ with the Brazil international after the full-time whistle.

What did Real Madrid say about Pepe Reina on Twitter?

Things could have ended there but minutes after the game had come to an end and Real Madrid had sealed qualification for the quarter-finals, the club’s official Twitter account published a photo of Dani Ceballos celebrating his match-winning goal, along with a reference to one of the most memorable (off-field) moments of Reina’s career.

“Camarero! Una de remontada, por favor” translates to “Waiter! A comeback, please”.

Now we get into the murky waters of explaining ‘jokes’, and in a foreign language too. ‘Camarero!’ jokes could be considered the Spanish equivalent of knock-knock jokes in English and normally consist of the ‘teller’ pretending to order something in a bar followed by a song which contains a play on words.

While celebrating Spain’s European Championships and World Cup victories between 2008 and 2012 respectively, Reina told a number of these ‘jokes’ on stage during the different victory parades, which haven’t clearly haven’t been forgotten about more than a decade later.