Since in 1863 the laws of the game defined and codified the practice of football, arbitration included, a lament has occupied all the hobbies: “They rob us”. Conspiracy theories about arbitration corruption have for most of history been, err, conspiracies. From time to time, however, cases arise where the fan’s feverish imagination becomes reality. Today we may face one of them. And it stars Barcelona.
The facts. They have been discovered by chance and place José María Enríquez Negreira at the center of the scandal. During an investigation by the Tax Agency directed against his company, DASNIL 95 SL, the Treasury discovered a series of irregularities related to Fútbol Club Barcelona. Specifically, a series of less striking payments: €532,000 in 2016; €541,000 in 2017; and €318,000 in 2018. A total turnover of €1,391,000 in a period of three years.
The relationship. Who is Negreira? A former referee who, since his retirement, offers consultancy and advisory services through DASNIL 95. What type of consultancy and advisory? One oriented towards football clubs. Negreira offers verbal and written reports on the character and nature of the First Division referees, in such a way that the teams can prepare your relationship with them during the encounters. This is common in professional football. The clubs extract information about the referees and deal with it.
What is extraordinary resides both in the amounts invoiced and in the position held by Negreira between 1994 and 2018: vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (that is, the “vice president of the referees”). Negreira was a judge, but also a party. A pristine definition of “conflict of interests“which casts all sorts of shadows on his relationship with Barça.
The gravity. We may be at the tip of the iceberg. The invoices do not prove anything by themselves, although they are not encouraging. El Mundo assures that they go back to 2001 and El País affirms that the club received informative DVDs, not only verbal reports, as Negreira explained at first, before each game. The Prosecutor’s Office has intervened ex officio given the seriousness of the events, so the investigation will yield results sooner or later. if Barça bought refereeswe will know.
Are there precedents? Of course they do and they come from that country so proverbial in its use of B accounts and covert goings-on as Italy. During the summer of 2006 and a few days after the start of the World Cup, the Italian Football Federation began an investigation into the relationship that various clubs, including some as powerful as Juventus or Milan, had with the body in charge of choosing to the referees of each match. The scandal would go down in history as “Calciopoli”.
In essence, Juventus and a handful of other clubs had created a system of pressure and intimidation within Italian professional soccer. Luciano Moggi, general director of the Turin club, influenced the federative estates to obtain the appointment of referees favorable to Juventus; he had a network of like-minded journalists who tiptoed through controversial arbitrations in his shows and columns; and he personally and physically pressured some referees to arbitrate in the way correct.
The scandal will last a long time: EL MUNDO accesses Barcelona’s invoices to Negreira: 33 payments in two years for 1,685,142 euros https://t.co/jx2TNCfF5D
—Vicente Ruiz (@vicenruiz) February 15, 2023
More complex. Calciopolialso baptized as moggigate, arose from a comprehensive investigation by the federation and affected more clubs. Various newspapers published recordings in which Moggi and other Juventus managers decided which referees would whistle for their team. Both the investigations and the facts analyzed went beyond the focus of the Negreira Case. It was not a single club, although later it would be eternally associated with scandal, but a way of operating and holding power within Italian football.
but also similar. There are common denominators, however. The Italian authorities only found one match potentially rigged by arbitration intervention, and it did not affect Juventus. Juventus was not even sentenced for illegally associating with the arbitration establishment, that is, for buy referees. His power and influence was exercised in a more subtle way: through media and personal pressure, through a network of contacts carefully woven by Moggi. His conviction had a lot of ethical breach, not explicit and proven manipulations.
More than ten years later, Juventus still does not consider that the events judged and convicted by Calciopoli were “his fault”. The club and its fans interpret the scandal as a dark ruse aimed at stripping them of their power and their titles. There are real conspiracy theories about the involvement of Inter’s top shareholder (Massimo Moratti) and about how Calciopoli, in reality, was not even about “match-fixing” or “arbitral purchase”. It was a power struggle.
landing. Of course, none of this seemed to convince the Italian sports or judicial authorities. Juventus would be relegated to the Second Division (Serie B) for one season and the rest of the teams involved (Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio) lost points and/or access to European competitions. In a similar way to Barça, the federation interpreted that Moggi’s mere relationship with the arbitration authorities (and his ability to influence the choice of referees, whether he executed it or not) was punishable and reprehensible.
And they were right.
Will it be repeated? Spanish football can draw more powerful lessons from Calciopoli. Serie A had dominated European football for the previous fifteen years. Great Italian businessmen poured their fortune into building top-level teams, dominating the transfer market each summer. Calciopoli it put an end to Calcio’s hegemony and led Serie A to a state of stagnation, regression and total decapitalization. A state that has turned him into a devalued competition.
The League is not going through its best moment. The Negreira Case could be your Calciopoli. Not only that of Barça, but that of the entire competition.
Image: GTRES