A victim and a few clarifications in the expected appearance of Joan Laporta

expected and necessary. But with a victimized tone. This Monday, after months of almost isolation, Joan Laporta he appeared at a press conference and in front of an expected audience to report on the Negreiro case. Although there was little information. For more than two hours, he limited himself to attempts to defend the institution he manages with three arguments: the victim, blaming third parties and not clarifying what happened with solid evidence. “He Barcelona never took any action that had the purpose, or intent, to change the competition for the purpose of gaining a sporting advantage. He The case of Negreiro It’s not about sports corruption,” Laporta repeated.

According to him, the case is not supported because there was never any attempt to buy the arbitrator. For him, there was simply a documented and adversarial service relationship with Negreira’s son, Javier Enriquez Romero. Namely, Laporta appeared with 629 technical-arbitrage reports, 43 cedés and four different reports found in the period from 2014 to 2018 in the research of the area Compatibility.

The auditing area of ​​​​Barcelona only concludes that there is no conduct with criminal relevance related to the criminal offense of sports corruption, that the financial benefits of the club to Negreira’s companies were for sports consulting services and that there is official documentation of invoices, payments and variable amounts depending on the competitions analyzed by Negreira’s son. Barca’s president protected himself in that article which processing received from Tax agency It made clear that it could not be shown that the payments to companies linked to Negreiro “could have influenced the choice of referees” or any sporting outcome of the match.

Why did you multiply the payments?

Laporta reiterated that the services paid for by Barcelona were provided by the son of the former vice-president of the Technical Committee of Referees. “The fact that Barcelona received technical and arbitration advice from this person does not constitute a criminal offence. Now it’s something that’s internalized,” he added.

“The money was paid out for 18 years, for some important reports, which were necessary and had to be done by someone with experience in the world. [el arbitral]», Laporta discussed the figure of 7.3 million euros sent to Negreira’s companies between 2001 and 2018. When asked why he multiplied the payments in the last year of his first term, the president claimed: “Services were increased because there were more study of reconnaissancebecause there were more sports competitions ».

Negreira confirmed in the Ministry of Finance that the accusations demand the neutrality of the arbitration. “I cannot speak for third parties. Mr. Negreira will explain this at the trial. He says that the neutrality thing was a personal hypothesis that no one told him directly. Payments are recorded by some services,” he defended himself.

Laporta was not at all convincing in explaining the key point of the case.

“Javier Tebas’ performance is irresponsible”

“The action of the President of the Alliance is irresponsible, imprudent and evidently lacking in professionalism, both in the statements he used to incite this controversy, and in providing documents that were wrong. I would ask you to stop this verbal incontinence because it does not help the competition it represents,” said Laporta, attacking Javier you, who demanded his resignation if he did not give strong explanations. “Neither he nor anyone from any club called us to find out. This gives us a lot to think about,” he added.

“The cynicism is that Real Madrid feels damaged”

Laporta regretted that Real Madrid went “for nothing” presenting himself as affected by the cause. “For this club to come forward and claim that it feels sportingly damaged in Barcelona’s best period seems cynical to me,” said the president, who felt the white club had historically been “favoured” by referees. In this sense, he added: “The majority of the leaders have been for decades Technical committee of judges They were without interruption former partners, former directors or former players of Madrid».

“The UEFA sanction will not happen”

“The UEFA, As it operates, it does not agree to this public lynching without trial that is carried out from some quarters. The sanction will not happen. It would be an unprecedented event for a club like Barcelona. They are publicly lynching us without condemning us. We are in contact with UEFA and the capacity for dialogue that we have with them exists,” commented Laporta.