Caso Negreira has been a staple of news in Spanish football for much of the last two months, since news first broke surrounding Barcelona’s relationship with Enriquez Negreira, former Vice President of the Technical Committee of Referees.
The Prosecutor’s Office is continuing its investigation into the matter, on the basis of alleged “sporting corruption”, to which Barcelona have strenuously denied.
Revelations continue to emerge daily, and El Confidencial (via Sport) have reported that Negreira’s son, Javier Negreira Romero, told the Tax Agency that he has been a member of Barcelona since he was 15 years old. On top of that, he played for the club in the lower categories between 1991 and 1993.
However, Negreira Romero has also confirmed, via a summary report, that he was barely involved in the process of dealing with referee reports.
“At the labour level, the only thing I did that was related to FC Barcelona was a brief arbitration report that I made on behalf of my father, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
“These reports described the style of arbitration, as well as behavioural recommendations and some statistical data collected from the internet of previous matches.”
Barcelona have maintained throughout that they did not buy referees, and that these reports were common and that Negreira had no influence on referees. Negreira Romero’s admissions are unlikely to prove this otherwise, as he claims to have had an even lesser role in the process.
