A few months back, FC Barcelona were accused of trying to influence a former Vice President of the Technical Committee of Referees by making payments amounting to up to €7.3million from 2001 to 2018.
In a recent development on the case, the current Barcelona President, Joan Laporta, was charged with the crime of bribing the official. Laporta reacted strongly in public to this development and called out the “sociological Madridismo” prevalent in Spanish institutions as the factor responsible for this development.
Guardiola on Negreira case
These charges of bribery go back to Laporta’s first stint as Barcelona President. During that time, Barcelona saw one of the best periods of their history, as the team led by Pep Guardiola went on to win everything in Spain and Europe.
Guardiola is now managing Manchester City, but owing to the overlap of his time at Barcelona and the events of the Negreira case, he was also asked about his opinion on these latest developments.
As SPORT has reported, the former Barcelona manager was not ready to hold anyone guilty for now, as he commented:
“The Negreira case? When there’s a verdict, I will give my opinion. Barcelona is innocent; Laporta is innocent unless proven otherwise.”
Guardiola highlights the quality of his Barcelona team
A reporter further pushed Guardiola to comment on whether he had noticed anything peculiar related to referee performances when he was the coach of Barcelona, to which he responded:
“You don’t know how good that team was. You’re very young, but I’ll send you some videos. It was scandalous how well we played. We won all the titles and were much better than the opponents.”
Guardiola was asked about the Negreira case in the past as well, but in all such instances, the Manchester City coach has highlighted the excellence of his team to showcase that there was no need to influence referees to get results.
Even the neutrals consider that Barcelona team to be one of the best in history, so there is definitely some substance in Guardiola’s point.
