La Liga boss: Maybe Barcelona’s corruption is a disgrace! They play the victim but have no explanation

Maybe Barcelona’s corruption is moving Spanish football. The Catalan big club paid millions of euros to the vice-president of the referees’ commission, but cannot explain why. And so La Liga president Javier Tebas has hit out at the club.

The scandal surrounding Barcelona is growing at a great pace. Originally, 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 since 2003 through various third parties.

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 Negreiro for “watching the matches at the 2014 World Cup”. Everything looks very suspicious, the allegations are very serious, but Barcelona cannot explain the situation.

“It’s a disgrace for the whole of Spanish football,” Javier Tebas, the head of Spain’s La Liga, told MARCA newspaper.

“The whole affair creates understandable tension. It’s not normal, I don’t remember anything like this in Spanish football. We have the payments to the vice-president of the referees’ commission, which Barcelona themselves have confirmed. It’s a shame because we still have no convincing explanation. Barcelona is playing the victim, which I don’t think is right,” says Tebas.

“Not only Barcelona’s reputation is at risk, but the whole of Spanish football. Everything I see worries me enormously because the accusations are getting more serious and the explanations more difficult. This is the worst problem we can solve. Barcelona president Joan Laporta says otherwise. So let him explain it to us,” the La Liga boss added.

Barcelona face the risk of having points deducted, having their titles taken away or even being relegated to the second tier if proven guilty. There have already been protests in stadiums against the club, with Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao fans throwing notes with the image of Blaugranas president Joan Laporta on the pitch, and Basque fans throwing notes with the Barcelona emblem and the words “MAFIA”.

“If they turn out to be innocent, so much the better for everyone. But we must see this through and if there are guilty parties, they must be punished,” Tebas concludes his appeal.

Source: MARCA