Barcelona paid Vice-President of Technical Referees Committee €1.4m over 3 years for neutral treatment

Barcelona are once again mired in controversy after it was revealed that they had been paying the Vice President of the Technical Committee for Referees, Enriquez Negreira, over a period of three years.

The payments were a significant €1.392m between 2016 and 2018 under the leadership of Josep Maria Bartomeu. Diario AS carried this information from SER Catalunya and put it with their own, saying that these payments are being investigated by the Justice Department in corruption case involving Negreira. The tax office say that there was insufficient documentation for the consultancy work carried out, with Negreira saying the work was delivered verbally. Barcelona maintain they have the necessary documentation.

Technical Consultancy was the supposed reason for these payments, with AS also adding that Barcelona wanted to ensure ‘everything was neutral’. The Technical Committee are in charge of providing guidance on refereeing practice, assessing referee performance and assigning referees.

Negreira himself is an ex-referee, and seemingly Barcelona also asked for advice for their players on how to deal with certain referees on the pitch.

Barcelona emitted a statement shortly after the news broke, with the following statements.

1. That FC Barcelona hired the services of an external technical consultant in the past, who supplied, in video format, technical reports referring to lower-category players in Spain for the Club’s technical secretariat.
2. Additionally, the relationship with the external provider itself was extended with technical reports related to professional referees in order to complement the information required by the coaching staff of the first team and the subsidiary, a common practice in professional football clubs.
3. Currently, this type of outsourced services falls to a professional assigned to the Soccer Area.
   4. FC Barcelona regrets that this information appears precisely at the best sporting moment of this season.
   5. FC Barcelona will take legal action against anyone who spoils the Club’s image with possible insinuations against the entity’s reputation that may arise as a result of this information.

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