I wonder two things: how did he manage to get promoted? Maybe the 7 million went there and Barca is really innocent. Secondly, is it a WUM/troll or is he really convinced of the rubbish he writes here? Maybe we need a poll.
Official: FC Barcelona charged with Corruption over payments to former referees chief | UEFA open investigation
- Thread starter Kush
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So what are the likely punishments?
A fine I imagine. Think I read somewhere that they can't be given a sporting punishment as it happened years ago? But hoping that's bollocks
Explain what possible reason Barca had for paying Negreira.
The idea that they had to pay for “referee reports” is a weird one. I would have thought they could just request them once they had been sent off to the governing body.
The issue with any payment to someone with a position of influence is that it is a conflict of interests. It’s completely unethical regardless of what it is for.
The fact it was concealed and there was 7 different accounts involved.. that’s the truly indefensible part. If that’s not a crimson red flag to these Barcelona fans then I don’t know what is.
For the most part they don't have fans. It's a cult. So they don't care about any of this. It's all conspiracy from Franco's grave to undermine their unparalleled football vision.
You know what the answer will be.
An awkward dance between claiming "it looks suspicious and Barcelona should be punished if they did anything illegal" while steadfastly denying that Barcelona could have done anything illegal.
THREAD from Twitter:
For the Barca fans who still don't understand, that you don't have to BUY individual referees to cheat in the Negreira-Barca system. Here is an explanation:
Barcelona paid almost 7.4m to Negreira between 2001-2018 (there are indications that these payments started as early as the 90s).
Negreira was Vice President of the CTA between 1994-2018 and was responsible for which referees were promoted/relegated and got to referee internationally. La Liga referees are paid around €400,000 a year (roughly twice as much as in the EPL).
In addition, Negreira's son (who also received money from Barcelona) ran numerous training camps for referees and was responsible, among other things, for driving the La Liga referees from the hotel to the stadium on match days.
So he was in close contact with referees and was able to influence referees as well. There have already been statements from some former La Liga referees that they "felt pressured" by Negreira's son.
In every league there are going to be referees who simply cannot be 100% impartial because they have a certain ideological proximity to individual teams. This is not a problem specific to Spain.
BUT: In a fair system, these referees (regardless of whether they are: pro United, pro City, pro Liverpool etc.) will no longer be allowed to referee in the top division over time because they'll make too many mistakes pro/contra certain teams.
This means that in a fair system it balances itself out and ultimately the majority of the referees in the top divisions who whistle fairly and impartially remain.
Negreira now made sure that this self-cleaning mechanism of the system cannot work. For at least 17 years he ruled that referees who are pro Barca/Anti Madrid were being promoted and those who made mistakes against Barca were punished more quickly (eg relegation)
In a system like this, you don't have to pay individual referees. You just make sure that as many of them as possible are ideologically pro Barca/Anti Madrid and you can be sure that the majority of the mistakes will be in your favor.
This also explains the following points: 1. Why do madridistas still say they are being disadvantaged? After all the payments ended in 2018. Easy to explain: The referees who are in La Liga because of Negreira are not suddenly impartial just because Negreira is gone.
On the contrary, many of them now hold high positions within the CTA themselves. Clos Gomez (as an active referee, he officiated 34 Real games: 20 wins, 7 draws, 7 defeats, 102 yellow cards, 8 red cards), for example, is head of the VAR in Spain.
2. "How can it be cheating, when there've also been decisions that put Barca at a disadvantage?" Because there was no active payment of the individual referees! There have always been mistakes and there always will be.
However, in a fair system, this balances itself out in the medium and long term, so that each club has approximately the same error rate pro/contra. Negreira's system worked by shifting that balance significantly towards Pro Barca.
Refs didn't get bribed individually, Negreira got bribed into selectively breeding a pro-Barça culture into La Liga by spending year on year selecting, recruiting and promoting refs that fit his system.
For the Barca fans who still don't understand, that you don't have to BUY individual referees to cheat in the Negreira-Barca system. Here is an explanation:
Barcelona paid almost 7.4m to Negreira between 2001-2018 (there are indications that these payments started as early as the 90s).
Negreira was Vice President of the CTA between 1994-2018 and was responsible for which referees were promoted/relegated and got to referee internationally. La Liga referees are paid around €400,000 a year (roughly twice as much as in the EPL).
In addition, Negreira's son (who also received money from Barcelona) ran numerous training camps for referees and was responsible, among other things, for driving the La Liga referees from the hotel to the stadium on match days.
So he was in close contact with referees and was able to influence referees as well. There have already been statements from some former La Liga referees that they "felt pressured" by Negreira's son.
In every league there are going to be referees who simply cannot be 100% impartial because they have a certain ideological proximity to individual teams. This is not a problem specific to Spain.
BUT: In a fair system, these referees (regardless of whether they are: pro United, pro City, pro Liverpool etc.) will no longer be allowed to referee in the top division over time because they'll make too many mistakes pro/contra certain teams.
This means that in a fair system it balances itself out and ultimately the majority of the referees in the top divisions who whistle fairly and impartially remain.
Negreira now made sure that this self-cleaning mechanism of the system cannot work. For at least 17 years he ruled that referees who are pro Barca/Anti Madrid were being promoted and those who made mistakes against Barca were punished more quickly (eg relegation)
In a system like this, you don't have to pay individual referees. You just make sure that as many of them as possible are ideologically pro Barca/Anti Madrid and you can be sure that the majority of the mistakes will be in your favor.
This also explains the following points: 1. Why do madridistas still say they are being disadvantaged? After all the payments ended in 2018. Easy to explain: The referees who are in La Liga because of Negreira are not suddenly impartial just because Negreira is gone.
On the contrary, many of them now hold high positions within the CTA themselves. Clos Gomez (as an active referee, he officiated 34 Real games: 20 wins, 7 draws, 7 defeats, 102 yellow cards, 8 red cards), for example, is head of the VAR in Spain.
2. "How can it be cheating, when there've also been decisions that put Barca at a disadvantage?" Because there was no active payment of the individual referees! There have always been mistakes and there always will be.
However, in a fair system, this balances itself out in the medium and long term, so that each club has approximately the same error rate pro/contra. Negreira's system worked by shifting that balance significantly towards Pro Barca.
Refs didn't get bribed individually, Negreira got bribed into selectively breeding a pro-Barça culture into La Liga by spending year on year selecting, recruiting and promoting refs that fit his system.
This is a really intelligent scheme
Yeah. I think this is the basic explanation.
We are missing some info regarding what happened to the money Negreira withdrew in cash and who else got paid, but yeah. This is it.
JOAN LAPORTA on the verge of tears and moved
"I don't get excited out of weakness. I get excited because I really want to confront the scoundrels who are tarnishing our shield".
0% explanations 100% emotions. It kind of reminded me of:
"I don't get excited out of weakness. I get excited because I really want to confront the scoundrels who are tarnishing our shield".
Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) date
0% explanations 100% emotions. It kind of reminded me of:
It's kinda sad that such a historically prestigious club have become such a farce and a shower of cheating bastards. Power corrupts absolutely eh
The wonderful corrupt world of modern football...Moneyball!
By paying over 7 million in undisclosed fees to the head of referees.
I wonder whether Barça‘s players still want to play for this joke of a club. I hear Gavi is available on a free..
I hope this rules out anyone wanting to partner with them in a super league
If their entire golden era is borne on the back of bribing the refs to help them win, is it really so historically prestigious? It also begs the question of what might have gone on in the past. Should we assume that they were squeaky clean through the murky 80s and 90s, only to suddenly opt to start cheating once they had built the best squad in the history of the sport? While I obviously have no proof of it, I wager this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, we just don't have evidence (yet) from before this particular sequence of bribes.
It's a good thing that our two CL finals against them weren't decided by controversial refereering calls or I'd have to care a whole lot more about this stuff. If they'd won through dodgy calls, I wouldn't be able to help myself from going full freelance detective. Thankfully, I can just sit back and wait to hear how they'll be punished for buying La Liga.
Someone on Reddit posted this:
It shows the net positive/negative of red cards for/against throughout the years in question. Barcelona are so insanely far ahead of everyone else that no amount of "but they had Messi and Neymar!!!" can come even remotely close to explaining it. They're at a +77 balance over the course of that decade and a half. That means their opponents have seen red seventy-seven more times than they have. And what do you know, the two teams with the worst record: Barcelona's two rivals, Real Madrid and Espanyol.
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Go straight to jail. Enjoy relegation.
I hope this rules out Spotify, Nike and the rest of sponsors wanting to partner with them
Yeah, their whole golden era is now at the very least very sketchy.
This comes from the 90s but not much sooner I would say. In 1993 Sanchez Armonio became the president of refs, in 1994 Negreira became ref VP, in 1988 Villar became president of the Spanish FA.
Those were their friends and the key people to the ref scandal
I have looked it up:
If you don't take into account the trophies they won since they started paying the ref VP, the would have:
16 La Ligas
24 Copa del Rey
5 Spanish Supercup
1 Champions League
As a comparison, Atlético de Madrid has:
14 La Ligas
10 copa del rey
2 Spanish supercups
3UEFA supercups
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That just so happens to be when Barcelona started to establish themselves as a top club.
Is this true? Has anyone checked it out?
That info comes from MaketoLari, it has already appeared in the Spanish press.
We already talked about it. It is pretty significant, and apparently that unequality (saldo arbitral) was only presente with Spanish refereering, it didnt translate to the Champions League.
If you were really wanting to be as subtle as possible, a bought ref might well just give them soft freekicks every time they get tackled.
We always seemed to stop making challenges against them because it would be a foul 90% of the time. Of course they were excellent at keeping possesion, which is why it would only take a few such soft freekicks to be awarded per game, to have a big influence. Looking at key decisions is only ever going to give you a part of the story.
Anyway, it looks like they are screwed. The individuals involved deserve the harshest punishment possible. And the club must be punished too.
What is it with Pep's clubs? No wonder he's cracking up. The guilty man flounders, tellingly.
We always seemed to stop making challenges against them because it would be a foul 90% of the time. Of course they were excellent at keeping possesion, which is why it would only take a few such soft freekicks to be awarded per game, to have a big influence. Looking at key decisions is only ever going to give you a part of the story.
Anyway, it looks like they are screwed. The individuals involved deserve the harshest punishment possible. And the club must be punished too.
What is it with Pep's clubs? No wonder he's cracking up. The guilty man flounders, tellingly.
It will still be very difficult to prove in court that Barca are guilty of corrupting the referees.
Not really. If they have done it, there are two routes:
1) To provide evidence of services rendered that would mean that the VP of refs deserved such compensation. This will be needed as otherwise drug dealers/human trafficers/general scumbags could just start paying people vast sums for 'advice' to clean their money.
2) One or a couple of refs have to admit that they were influenced to favour Barca by the VP.
You can hear here Julio Salinas' declarations. The former Barca player has said:
"For me, Barça is guilty of corruption for having paid amounts with false invoices. It is a scandal to pay 8M€to a ref. It's like if I work as a scouter for Barça and they pay me a million a year because we are good friends. But I don't think Barca benefited from the referees. There has always been a tendency to harm Barca, the beneficiary is another club"
"For me, Barça is guilty of corruption for having paid amounts with false invoices. It is a scandal to pay 8M€to a ref. It's like if I work as a scouter for Barça and they pay me a million a year because we are good friends. But I don't think Barca benefited from the referees. There has always been a tendency to harm Barca, the beneficiary is another club"
So they paid all of that cash and the beneficiary is another club? Barca can't even cheat properly, is that what he'd have us believe?
Awww Barcelona was just paying him because they're friends, so wholesome.
The statistic for red cards for and against Barcelona would disagree with this completely.
I’m not sure why people associated with Barcelona are digging their heels in over this and playing a victim like it’s a defense. You will get more positive responses if you own up to your shit and accept the punishment you deserve.
There’s no agenda against Barcelona. At one point they were one of the most popular teams in the world. Now they are rightfully a joke.
Have these cnuts been relegated yet?
Which referee will admit that on his own free will ? Without a testimony of that nature, they would need to prove without doubt that the money transfered was indeed used to influence refs. Without a testimony, they would need something like wiretaps discussing money transfers.
Very difficult to prove IMHO
Do people like that actually think anyone will believe that sort of insane nonsense? He's essentially saying that Barcelona paid the refs to help another club! Jesus wept. He acknowledges that Barca are corrupt and paid refs, he just insists that they didn't pay the refs to help them. Is he mentally ill?
More than that, I cannot really see Tebas / Spanish football system / even Madrid being stupid enough to put La Liga into the ordeal of lenghty legal battles in ordinary courts, that undermining their own sports global softpower project. Even less than that, the EPL with City allegations, Newcastle under Saudis and now Qatar trying to buy the biggest club around aka United. Some sort of political truce, a blah blah reset and a blah blah strengthened code of conduct will be implented before the new season starts both in Spain and the UK.
Depends if the ref is leveraged. If the authorities have them on something else as well then they can get at them that way. Additionally, of my two points the former is more likely than the latter. Barca will need to provide concrete evidence of the services they were paying for, if not they leave the judges with little other option, as when things go to court charges aren't only laid when there is irrefutable evidence but on the balance of probabilities/reasonable doubt.
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I think it will depend on the weight of the other evidence.
You do not need direct evidence to convict.
That's a good point. Madrid and Barcelona are in bed for the Super League.
I'm very skeptical by nature, I think it's easier for Barca to "justify" those payments over the years than proving they used that money to corrupt referees.
They would need a lot of corroboration and I think it would take more than 1 ref to speak about it. A corruption of that level must involve a lot of referees
It doesn’t have to be corrupting referees just intent to gain an advantage.
it’s not as if Barca are this one entity, many managers and personnel have passed through that club. It’s not as if they can shut up shop and keep one story straight.
I think paying a referee is already illegal, no matter whether you buy his shoelace or whatever. Corruption laws are against semblance already, so the known evidence should suffice. I'd rather fear a statute of limitations or something like that.