'Really, really bad' - Barcelona scandal 'stinks', says Sid Lowe

Karan Tejwani

• 18 Feb 2023 12:00 CST
• 2 min read

Barcelona have been embroiled in scandal over the past week as it emerged that they had been paying José María Enríquez Negreira, the former Vice President of the Referees Committee.

The payments happened from 2001 to 2018 across the tenure of four different Barcelona presidents including Joan Laporta in his first stint and the controversial Josep Bartomeu.

Details of the payment were made clearer over the course of the week with some fans suggesting it played a part in their success on the pitch.

READ: New Barcelona signing can't be registered after missing deadline by 18 seconds

Spanish football journalist Sid Lowe has now said it’s a bad situation and doesn’t paint a good picture of the club.

Barcelona in hot water

The total amount paid out to Negreira over that time was €7 million, with €1.4 million paid between 2016 and 2018 when Bartomeu was in charge.

Barcelona’s defence is that they had hired his services to “ensure that no controversial refereeing decisions went against them” and that officials remained neutral in their treatment of the club.

READ: Barcelona in hot water over Marcos Alonso transfer

The refereeing committee have distanced themselves from their former Vice President and made it clear that this incident went against their internal code of conduct as there was a conflict of interest.

The case was revealed by Cadena SER - a Catalan publication, which has been praised by Lowe, and any suggestions that this has come out to harm Barcelona’s season, as Laporta has said, are invalid.

In 2018, Barcelona said they were ending the payments to which Negreira was unhappy, suggesting he would reveal details of this agreement, but the club still proceeded to terminate them anyways.

La Liga have also said no action can be taken as it happened over three years ago, which is the statute of limitations for such a case.

Lowe said the case doesn’t reflect well on the club: "Bottom line...this is really really bad. This stinks!"

READ: New Barcelona signing can't be registered after missing deadline by 18 seconds