FC Barcelona Disciplinary Action Decision From UEFA Imminent

A decision from European football governing body UEFA
EFA
on how to deal with FC Barcelona for its involvement in the ‘Caso Negreira’ referee committee payments scandal, which could include slapping the club with temporary suspension from the Champions League, is ‘imminent’ according to Mundo Deportivo.

The La Liga winners were charged with “continued corruption between individuals in the sports field” by the Barcelona provincial prosecutor’s office in Marc after it was revealed that they made payments to the Former Vice President of the Technical Committee of Referees, Jose Maria Enrique Negreira.

According to El Mundo, the Catalans paid Negreira almost €7 million ($7.5 million) from 2001 to 2018 – a timeframe that also takes in the first reign of current president Joan Laporta which ran from 2003 to 2018.

Laporta has denied that there has been any wrongdoing from the club on several occasions, and attests that the payments were made honestly for valid consultation work.

UEFA announced in March that it had launched its own investigation into the matter because of a “potential violation” of its rules.

In late April, SPORT reported how after flying to meet the authority’s president Aleksander Ceferin, Laporta had become confident UEFA would not hand down a potential ban from the Champions League as it will wait for the matter to be clarified in court before taking action.

Around five weeks on, however, rival publication Mundo Deportivo reports that a resolution to the case from UEFA’s perspective is “imminent” with three scenarios possible.

The first and most attractive for Barca is that UEFA’s case is closed and no further action is taken. The second, and perhaps most damaging, is that they are temporarily suspended from the Champions League in 2023/2024 in compliance with Article 4.2 of the competition’s regulations.

If this were to occur, the matter would head straight to UEFA’s Appel Body with precautionary measures against the Blaugrana requested before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Finally, another possible outcome – and more in line with what Laporta thought according to SPORT – is that Barca can still play the Champions League next term and won’t be sanctioned until the case has been resolved in court in Spain.

It goes without saying that in financially-difficult times, the shape of Barca’s immediate future rests heavily on whether sanctions are forthcoming or not.

Currently struggling to navigate La Liga Financial Fair Play limits, the club badly needs the huge revenue that the Champions League brings in through ticket sales, television money, and bonuses with exclusion through suspension unthinkable.