La Liga boss: If Barcelona drop to the second league, nothing happens. They’ll be back in a year

Barcelona is having a great year on the pitch and is leading La Liga for the first time in a long time, but the club’s officials are really hot in the offices. The growing referee bribery scandal is threatening to relegate them to the second league.

The scandal surrounding Barcelona is growing at a great pace. Initially, it was supposed to be about payments to the vice-president of the referees’ commission, Enriquez Negreiro, in 2016-2018, but it was eventually revealed that Barcelona had been paying him through various third parties since 2003.

The problem is that no one can explain the reason for the payments. Barcelona doesn’t deny the payments, but they claim that they paid for reports on referees and how players should treat referees.

But, for example, coach Ernesto Valverde, who coached Barcelona at the time, said he had never seen any reports.

Further payments were to go to Negreira for “watching the 2014 World Cup matches”. Everything looks very suspicious, the allegations are very serious, only Barcelona cannot explain the situation.

La Liga boss Javier Tebas is also much questioned about the current situation. Although he previously stated that Barcelona cannot be punished sportingly, he later added that FIFA has that power.

“If Barcelona goes down, nothing happens. They will be back next year. La Liga cannot look the other way,” Tebas said in an interview with El Larguero.

If proven guilty, Barcelona could face having points deducted, having their title stripped from them or even being relegated to the second tier. Protests against the club are already sweeping the stadiums, with Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao fans throwing banknotes with the image of Blaugranas president Joan Laporta on the pitch, and Basque fans throwing notes with the Barcelona emblem and the word “MAFIA”.

Source: El Larguero