The saga of Barcelona’s payments to a company owned by former referees committee vice president, José María Enríquez Negreira, continues as more information reveals the extent of the club’s association with Negreira. Although the prosecutor’s office is only investigating the payments between 2016 and 2018, Barcelona’s involvement with Negreira goes back as far as 2001 with total payments from the club reaching €7 million. It’s also been revealed that the Blaugranas quadrupled the payments to Negreira in 2009 under the presidency of Joan Laporta. It will now need to be seen whether Barcelona face any serious punishment.
However, the suspicion that has constantly surrounded Barcelona about receiving beneficial treatment has magnified and brought up many controversial moments that have involved Barcelona. Despite Barcelona’s success, they’ve also found themselves on the right side of some of the most scandalous refereeing decisions in recent history.
- 2009: 5 missed penalty claims against Chelsea.
- 2010: Thiago Motta sent off for slightly touching Sergio Busquets.
- 2011: Van Persie sent off for kicking the ball a second after the referee blew for offside.
- 2011: Pepe’s sending off after not touching Dani Alves.
- 2012: Barcelona awarded a penalty against AC Milan when the ball wasn’t even in play.
- 2017: 2 questionable penalties called for Barcelona and 2 missed penalties for PSG.
Blaugrana fans will surely say these decisions are down to interpretation and point to other teams that have benefitted from controversial decisions. However, Barcelona has also been involved in several non-refereeing controversies that have not even seen the club be punished. In fact, some of them even involve the league and federation as some of their decisions seem to always benefit Barcelona in pivotal moments. What are some of these notorious scandals?
Before beginning, some honorable mentions include:
- Barcelona making signings while having a $1 billion debt.
- The gazpacho game.
- Rival fans not being able to attend a game at the Camp Nou with their team’s jersey outside of the away section.
- Robert Lewandowski’s three-match ban being temporarily lifted.
- The Monday Clásico
- The 2019 rescheduled Clásico due to “political” reasons.
- Barcelona tapping up Antoine Griezmann
- Media mogul, Jaume Roures, financing Joan Laporta’s financial guarantee for him to return as president of Barcelona in 2021.
Refusing to play
In the 1999/2000 Copa del Rey, Barcelona took on Atlético Madrid in the semifinals where they lost the first leg 3-0 in the Calderon stadium. However, what happened in the second leg was one of the strangest moments in the history of the competition. At that moment, Barcelona had a lot of players from the Netherlands and the return match coincided with a Dutch national team game. While Barcelona claimed they didn’t have enough players and wanted to reschedule it, the Spanish Federation disagreed and the game went ahead.
Both teams arrived at the Camp Nou, but Atlético Madrid was only one that stepped onto the field. The remaining Barcelona players stayed put on the sideline and it was captain, and current Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola who took to the field to inform the referee about the team’s decision to not play. Along with being handed the loss, they were initially given a one-year ban from the tournament, but that would later be overturned and the club was allowed to take part in the 2000/2001 Copa del Rey edition.
Interestingly, the federation didn’t show the same sympathy towards Racing Santander in 2014 when they refused to play in their quarter-final second leg against Real Sociedad for not being paid by the club. Contrary to Barcelona, Racing Santander were banned from the competition for two seasons and the decision wasn’t overturned.
Figo’s return to the Camp Nou
Luis Figo’s move from Barcelona to Real Madrid in 2000 was deemed the transfer of the century. The Portuguese international went from being the Blaugrana’s most iconic player to becoming persona non grata. It was well known that his first game at the Camp Nou with Real Madrid was going to be a tense encounter with lots of whistles and derogatory chants directed at him. However, nobody could’ve imagined what would go on to transpire that day. Before the game, the local Barcelona newspaper, Sport, began fomenting the hostile environment by giving its readers a banknote poster with Figo’s face on it. As the game began, the Barcelona supporters group revealed a banknote tifo of their own, but with an image of Figo with his recently born daughter. If that wasn’t bad enough, objects were constantly thrown at Figo every time he went close to the sidelines.
Sadly, this wouldn’t be the last time that Figo would face this sort of treatment at the Camp Nou. Figo’s second appearance at the Camp Nou would come in 2002, but this occasion would see Luis Figo be on corner kick duties. As expected, countless objects were once again thrown at him, which included glass bottles and even a pig’s head. In fact, things got so bad, that the game had to be held up until the fans calmed down.
Initially, Barcelona was given a one-game stadium ban, but then that would be overturned after the club appealed the decision and the ban would then be replaced with a fine. Although a certain degree of hostility was expected, the behavior of Barcelona’s fans (as well as its President and directors) crossed the line and left such a damming image that La Liga has still not been able to recover from.
Late to a Game
Today, almost every team in La Liga now travels on the day of the game instead of the day before (unless it’s an early start time). Contrary to years past when the only team that would travel on the day of the game was FC Barcelona; a practice implemented by Pep Guardiola during his time as manager. This was something that Guardiola was adamant about, but as the team prepared for an important away match against Osasuna during the 2010/2011 season, the club would find itself in a bit of an odd predicament.
In the lead-up, it was announced that there would be an air traffic controllers strike in Barcelona on the day of the Osasuna game. Now, you would think the club would make the obvious decision and simply travel the day before to avoid any sort of issues. However, whether it was Guardiola or the directors, Barcelona were convinced they could get a game-day flight and were left stranded. As their attempts to reschedule the game were denied by La Liga and the Spanish Federation, they had no other choice than to travel by train and arrived at Osasuna’s stadium a few minutes over the original start time. With all this, you would think Barcelona would have faced some sort of punishment, such as the game being awarded to Osasuna or Barcelona being given a points deduction.
WRONG!
The game started a bit later but went on as usual, and Barcelona would defeat Osasuna 0-3 without receiving any kind of punishment. It is baffling to see that a team can show up late to a game, arguing because of an air traffic controller strike that was announced days before, and yet are not punished for it.
Barcelona vs Las Palmas: Behind Closed Doors
On October 1st, 2017, Barcelona was set to take on Las Palmas in a La Liga fixture at the Camp Nou in front of their own fans. However, there had been much uncertainty throughout the day about whether the game would actually take place as the region of Catalonia was having an illegal independence referendum. Although there had been contrasting reports about incidents in the city, the club still requested for the game to be postponed as they felt it wasn’t safe enough to play. Something which contrasts with Barcelona’s local police who stated there was no public safety issue and that the game could go ahead.
Whatever was happening in Barcelona, it didn’t seem to be that dangerous as fans began to appear without there being any sense of chaos. In fact, the ticket office was already open and selling tickets for the game. Despite all the assurances that the game could go on without any issues, the club still made the decision to play behind closed doors and left all those fans that came to watch them stranded. The Blaugranas stated they wanted to bring attention to what was occurring in the city, but that was quickly refuted as it then surfaced that the incidents that had occurred throughout the day were not as serious as originally reported.
There was no reason for Barcelona to play this game behind closed doors when their own local police force stated there was no public safety issue. All this did was hurt the fans that went to watch the game, as well as La Liga’s image, and was something that both La Liga and the Federation should have reprimanded. But, as we’ve seen on prior occasions, they did nothing and Barcelona got away without even the slightest punishment.
2018/2019 Spanish Super Cup
Before 2019, the Spanish Super Cup use to be played over two legs between the winners of La Liga and the Copa del Rey. The 2018/2019 edition was supposed to be no different as Barcelona (La Liga and Copa del Rey winners) took on Sevilla (Copa del Rey finalists). In fact, the schedules for the games were already set to take place on the 5th and 12th of August. However, that’s when Barcelona found themselves in an odd situation. While on their preseason tour, Barcelona had scheduled one of their matches to be played on August 4th, the day before the first leg, and requested for the Super Cup schedule to be changed. As a result, the Spanish Federation decided to change the format of the 2018/2019 edition and make it a one-off match. If that wasn’t bad enough, they decided to play the game in Tangier, Morocco.
The tension between Sevilla and the Federation was so high that Pepe Castro (Sevilla’s President) and Luis Rubiales (Spanish Federation President) got into a verbal altercation during a live radio interview. Things got even more controversial a day before the game when the Federation announces that there would be no limit to the amount of non-EU players that can take part in the Spanish Super Cup. Controversial because the only team that had more than 3 non-EU players was Barcelona; something that Sevilla was willing to take legal action against if Barcelona played with more than 3 non-EU players. Although it resulted in nothing as Philippe Coutinho was able to get his Portuguese citizenship just before the game, it was a decision that once again came to Barcelona’s rescue as they had struggled to get rid of the excess amount of non-EU players they had on their squad.
While the Blaugranas might have won that Super Cup on the field, all the events that occurred off it only increased the suspicion about Barcelona’s beneficial treatment. They can spin it however they want, but it wasn’t Sevilla that scheduled a preseason game a day before the Super Cup nor had an excess of non-EU players. Instead of making them deal with it (or sanctioning them), the federation decided to change the competition’s format and regulations in a matter of weeks just to help Barcelona get out of a mess that was of their own doing.
Javier Martinez is a seasoned veteran of football coverage and an expert on Spanish football. He has been covering world football for more than seven years with bylines at outlets such as The 18 and The Real Champs.