It was the first thing everyone seemed to be asking as soon as the news broke.
Are Barcelona going to be docked points like Juventus? Also, could they even be dropped down the leagues?
It sounds really bad: prosecutors are investigating payments totalling €1.4million (£1.2m; $1.3m) the club made to a company owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira who, at the time, was vice-president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee.
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It definitely is bad and it’s already incredibly damaging for Barca, but the short answer to those first two questions is: we just don’t know yet.
The longer answer is: it seems most likely to depend on whether criminal charges are brought in the case, with details still emerging.
Below is the full picture of everything we know and what it means for the future after another hugely dramatic day at Barcelona…
… but first, there’s something else we need to explain.
We’re not the only ones waiting to see what happens. Both the Spanish Football Association and governmental body the High Council for Sports (CSD) are in the same position. These authorities could become involved with any sporting sanctions.
A CSD spokesperson told The Athletic: “The issue is with prosecutors, so our position is one of maximum respect for the judicial investigations.”
The Spanish FA has begun an inquiry through its “integrity department”. But a source at the body, who preferred to speak anonymously to protect their position, said on the subject of what action might be taken: “It’s out of our hands until the judicial process is over.”
So, yes, there are some questions we can’t fully answer yet. But there are also many that we can.
On Tuesday night, Barcelona president Joan Laporta and the communications team at the club received a phone call from Cadena SER.
The Spanish radio station described to them the information they had: that there is an ongoing investigation into payments made by Barca to DASNIL 95, a company owned by former referee Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
The Barcelona prosecutor’s office is investigating these payments — reported by Cadena SER to be €532,728.02 in 2016, €541,752 in 2017 and €318,200 in 2018 — with a view to bringing charges of corruption between individuals, as is phrased in Spanish law. They were motivated to do so after the payments were flagged as irregular by tax inspectors looking into DASNIL’s financial records.
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On Tuesday, during those initial conversations with Cadena SER, Laporta and Barca decided not to comment.
Even on Wednesday at midday, when Cadena SER published its story, there was still a sense of relative calm coming from inside the club. Manager Xavi was about to appear for press conference duties before the Europa League game against Manchester United, but Barcelona had already prepared a public statement.
They admitted they had employed an “external consultant” who provided reports “related to professional refereeing” before condemning the timing of the story: “Barcelona regrets that this information appeared just at the best sporting moment of the present season.” Enriquez Negreira told Cadena SER he never favoured Barcelona in terms of refereeing decisions.
Links between football clubs and referees are not new in Spain. Carlos Megia Davila, a referee with 220 games under his belt, has worked, entirely legitimately, for Real Madrid’s Institutional Relations department since retiring in 2009.
Laporta was Barca president from 2003-2010 before returning to the role in 2021 (Photo: Joan Valls/Urbanandsport /NurPhoto via Getty Images)Manuel Mejuto Gonzalez, who refereed 263 games in the Spanish top flight, is now part of Getafe’s first-team structure, again working entirely legitimately. But Enriquez Negreira’s relationship with Barca is the only case where payments were made by a club to an individual still working for the Spanish FA and in a position of real influence.
That feeling of calm with which Barca’s leadership began Wednesday soon started to evaporate. After declining to comment the previous night, Laporta decided to speak through the club’s social media channels at around 2pm.
Laporta’s words did not differ too much from what we had read hours before in the club’s statement, although there was a dramatic address directly to camera as he made a populist appeal to the club’s fans.
He said: “I want to make it very clear, cules. It’s not a coincidence that this information has come out now. Information like this when things are going well. It’s not a coincidence.”
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As further reporting began to emerge, it did not escape attention that 2018 — the year Barca stopped their payments to DASNIL — was the last year Enriquez Negreira worked in his role.
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The optics of this detail are especially uncomfortable for Barca. And they aren’t great for the Spanish FA either. Though there is no suggestion of any favourable treatment from referees, or from the technical committee of which Enriquez Negreira was vice-president.
In the Madrid headquarters of the Spanish FA — which is in charge of the referees in Spain — pressure was mounting throughout Wednesday.
At around 4pm local time (3pm GMT; 10am ET), the Comite Tecnico de Arbitros (CTA), Spanish football’s referees’ committee, made a statement.
“The committee wants to make clear that Mr Enriquez Negreira has not belonged to any federative structure of the FA since the change of board that took place in 2018.
“No active referee or member of the CTA bodies may carry out any work that is likely to constitute a conflict of interest.
“The CTA is making itself available to authorities to offer its full collaboration with any type of information it can provide.”
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In 2018, the Spanish FA did indeed change structure and leadership. But in choosing to highlight that, the CTA’s statement seemed concerned with directing more serious questions elsewhere, and it didn’t leave us much clearer on the subject of Barca’s relationship with Enriquez Negreira and what it constituted.
As the day progressed, sources at the Spanish FA, who wished to remain anonymous in order to protect their positions, began to help fill in some of the picture.
“It seems difficult to effectively prove how Barcelona might have benefited from refereeing over recent years,” said one such source.
It was also confirmed that the body’s “integrity unit” had begun an internal investigation. But again, and as is detailed at the beginning of this article, the point was made that any future action would depend on how prosecutors deal with the case.
Back in Barcelona, one of the busiest people in the city seemed to be Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former Barca president.
Bartomeu, pictured here in 2020, the year he resigned as Barca president (Photo: Pedro Salado/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)He resigned as Barca president back in 2020 and has not made any public address since. On Wednesday, he was back in the spotlight.
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Bartomeu, who is already under investigation by the prosecutor’s office in relation to allegations encompassed by the ‘Barcagate’ scandal, all of which he denies, answered requests for comment from The Athletic in Wednesday’s late hours, blaming his delay on what had been a hectic day.
Speaking to The Athletic, he further confirmed the links between Barcelona and DASNIL 95.
When asked to explain why so much money had been paid to Enriquez Negreira’s company, he said: “Every top club has those kinds of services. €500,000 for referee’s references is too much? I don’t know what other elite clubs pay, to be honest.”
Reports on Wednesday in the Spanish media detailed how information on referees assigned to Barca’s games would be sent to the club by DASNIL 95, with details that might provide management with an idea of how best to instruct players to behave towards them.
Further reports quoted testimony given by Enriquez Negreira to Spain’s tax authorities, in which he said Barcelona had paid him “to make sure no refereeing decisions were made against them, which is to say, for everything to be neutral”.
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Bartomeu claimed to have only dealt with Enriquez Negreira’s son Javier, and not to have been aware that Enriquez Negreira himself was “involved in the company, too” until later on.
He said it was Javier who supplied the “technical reports” Barca paid for and that he “completed them with great professionalism”.
When explaining the decision behind ending the payments in 2018, Bartomeu added: “In order to reduce our expenses and save money, the sports department of the club notified me we would part ways with this company and start assuming this job internally.”
He also suggested links with DASNIL 95 were something the club inherited from a long time ago, that they had been there even before the first day he set foot at the club as an advisor during Laporta’s first presidency back in 2003.
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According to Bartomeu, suspicions over the club’s payments to the company were raised with prosecutors because Enriquez Negreira had declared his services to Barca were always delivered “in a verbal way” and not in writing. Bartomeu wanted to stress that documentary evidence does exist.
He said: “Barcelona have reports about the services this company offered to the club. There were written reports, but also with video analysis of referees’ performances in both first-team and Barcelona B team games.”
And then, after more than 20 minutes on the phone, he took his leave, hoping he had been helpful.
This is how a day full of phone calls, statements and messages panned out in a city where no one involved at Barca seemed to be in a safe space. Even former executives who have been out of the club, some of them for more than four years, have had to declare in front of prosecutors, including Bartomeu.
One of these former executives, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect their position, told The Athletic he “can’t see a way Barcelona can be demoted to Spanish football’s lower leagues, or face a severe competitive penalisation over this”.
The prosecutors’ investigation has not yet been completed. Once it has, we will see how the relevant sporting authorities decide to act.
But whatever the outcome, this is already another tough blow for Barcelona. Leaving aside for the moment questions of legal, economic or sporting punishment, there are the consequences this has for the club’s narrative about itself. Barca’s image was already very badly damaged. This case, involving an association with the referee’s committee, one that many see as being cultivated in search of competitive advantage, is particularly bad for the club.
Barca have historically been a club associated with fighting the authorities. Under the years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, the club even had to change its name to Club de Futbol Barcelona. The Camp Nou was one of the few public spaces where Catalans felt free to speak their language, despite its use being banned elsewhere.
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In September 1976, a referee, Antonio Camacho, publicly described what he saw as institutional bias against Barcelona when saying: “While Jose Plaza stays as the chief of the referees’ association, Barcelona will never win a league title.”
The club grew with that. Generations of fans grew up knowing Barcelona had to fight against it. Now, even if they are not found guilty of anything, the details of this case, which are still emerging, must represent yet another damaging moral blow, striking once more to the very heart of the club’s identity.
There is still a lot to unfold and a big investigation to conclude. But one thing is for sure: February 15, 2023, won’t be remembered as a good day in Barcelona’s history.
(Top photo: Marc Graupera Aloma/Europa Press via Getty Images)
The Athletic’s Spanish football coverage has expanded…
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