UEFA allows Barcelona to play Champions League despite Negreiro case

He Barcelona can dispute Champions League next season. The Uefa will allow Barça to participate in Europe’s top competition despite being scouted the case of Negreira, the biggest scandal in the history of Spanish football exposed in the month of February due to multi-million payments of that entity to the former vice-president of referees.

Barcelona were notified by UEFA this Friday of their presence at the August 31st Champions League group stage draw in Monte Carlo, after the organisation’s Control and Disciplinary Committee ruled they should not be fined pending a court decision. “We expect to play champions. I had personal meetings with Aleksandar Ceferin and he understood the explanations. They wanted to use Negreiro’s case to veto us in the Champions League, but they can’t condemn us before they judge us, Joan Laporta said a few hours before it became known that Barcelona was left without a UEFA sanction.

Contrary to what happened with Osasuna, that you will not be able to participate in Conference league After the 2013-2014 match-fixing ban, Barcelona will have a free hand to play in the next edition of the Champions League, where they will be seeded in the draw as champions of the League, along with Manchester City, Sevilla, PSG, Bayern Munich, Napoli, Benfica and Feyenoord.

If it was punished by exclusion from the Champions League, and therefore from all European competitions, Barcelona, ​​already so affected by the worrying economic crisis that affected all its professional sections, could lose at least 70 million euros next season. His participation in a major European competition will therefore mean financial and sporting relief for Barcelona, ​​accused of corruption because it paid 7.3 million euros from 2001 to 2018. Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, which was number two Technical committee of judges (CTA).