The club is innocent and it has not been possible to prove that the payments made to companies connected to Enriquez Negreira could have influenced the referees or the results of any match. These were the main arguments, repeated several times, put forward by the president of Futbol Club Barcelona, Joan Laporta, two months and two days after the sporting entity gave a brief response through a press release to the first reports of the so-called Negreira Case, and 40 days after he publicly affirmed that the club had never bribed referees and that there was a campaign to damage its interests. Laporta's long, intense and comprehensive speech at the press conference, which lasted almost three hours, has probably arrived late, but for the first time it offers an argument of defence against a matter that is easier to understand than to explain, although even understanding it is enormously difficult.
Laporta's best oratory was no guarantee of victory for the president on this occasion. The sum of seven million euros is a lot of money to spend on reports, no matter how you explain it, no matter how many boxes of reports and CDs are attached. This is the main Achilles heel under attack by a despicable and sordid campaign that attacks the club's reputation more than the criminal charge does, which is hard to see. All this happens, moreover, at a time when the Spanish Professional Football League is headed by someone who is apparently fully hostile, that is, Javier Tebas, and many, but not all, media outlets in the Spanish capital believe they have found a case of corruption aimed at altering results in football matches, when none of this has been proven either by the Spanish public prosecutors or by the Tax Agency, whereas, on the other hand, there is evidence of summaries of sporting advice compiled by an expert on referrees.
Laporta's public explanation was aimed at three audiences: firstly, the culers who two years ago elected him once again to the presidency of the club with more than 54% of votes ahead of Víctor Font and Toni Freixa. That was, perhaps, the easiest ground to argue on since everyone is aware that these candidates found a club that was institutionally, financially and sportingly in tatters. I am sure that if a poll were conducted now, the president's explanations would have convinced a high percentage of the social mass. Secondly, to separate friends from enemies in this "all change" moment in La Liga, UEFA, FIFA, Real Madrid, the Spanish Football Federation, the Spanish Sports Council and Florentino Pérez. The Spanish league cannot continue to have Tebas as president and Madrid has historically been the club of the regime favoured by the referees. The Federation and the Council cannot, under any terms, be treated the same.
Kid gloves for UEFA and FIFA, from whom penalties could be imposed on the club and on those responsible for it. Here, Barça is also standing on shaky ground, since the development of the European Super League has put the Barça club at odds with the international bodies. If Laporta did one thing in his appearance it was to lower this tension, by offering responses as pleasantly as possible and casting an eye towards the judicial situation, which for now is blurry, to try to stop a possible sporting penaltization. This is a issue that will probably be addressed in June and will depend a lot on how he has played his cards with Aleksander Čeferin and Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino, the two top administrators of European and world football. And on Laporta taking Florentino by the hand in the Super League, today paralyzed in a project that is frozen, but perhaps not dead. And who knows what UEFA and FIFA will ask of Barça.