Barcelona has responded swiftly to statements made by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez regarding the “Negreira case,” in which he once again accused the Catalan club of paying referees between 2000 and 2018.
The club issued an official statement in response to Perez’s remarks, made during a press conference on Tuesday. Barcelona confirmed that its legal team is thoroughly reviewing all statements and accusations made by the Real Madrid president and will assess next steps based on the findings.
In its statement, Barcelona said: “Regarding the press conference held by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, we inform that our legal department is carefully studying his statements and accusations. At present, these statements are being analyzed and next steps are being evaluated. When deemed appropriate, the public will be duly informed of the positions and decisions to be taken.”
Florentino Perez had reignited the Negreira controversy, stating he would present a file to UEFA to address the matter at its root. He said: “Three years ago, we discovered the Negreira case, the biggest scandal in football history. Payments continued for two full decades, but the problem is that the third decade sees the same referees still in charge. We will submit an important file to UEFA to deal with the case from its roots and resolve it for the good of world football.”
Perez added: “Real Madrid members stand by me in my fight against the Negreira case and other issues. It’s not just Real Madrid that always suffers; other clubs do too, while Barcelona always benefits. UEFA will intervene in this case, and it will indeed get involved. There cannot be suspicions of corruption where money was paid for 20 years. We will see what happens at a criminal and sporting level from UEFA, and we will see what happens.”
He continued: “I didn’t come here so that referees could enrich themselves with Barcelona’s money.” Regarding his earlier comment that “Barcelona should be helped,” he clarified: “That statement was made long before the Negreira case. We only discovered the matter recently, and we couldn’t imagine that the head of the refereeing committee had been receiving money from Barcelona for two full decades. This case emerged late. Since then, we have started preparing a complete file, and we will see it through to the end. It’s the biggest corruption case in football history, and for the sake of the game itself. No one in the world can imagine paying money to referees; this is unbelievable.”
Perez also said: “We were completely shocked. I have been here for many years, and I don’t know how many seasons I’ve spent, yet I have only won seven Champions League titles and seven league titles, when it could have been 14 titles because they were stolen from us. We have prepared a video showing the 18 points we were denied this season.”
