Barçagate is only “the tip of the iceberg” says Lendoiro
The former Deportivo president described allegations of Barcelona paying refereeing officials as “the worst news in the history of Spanish football”.
The former president of Deportivo Augusto César Lendoiro has described Barcelona’s alleged payments to a company belonging to former referee and ex-vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees José María Enríquez Negreira as “the worst news in the history of Spanish football”.
Spanish broadcaster Cadena SER leaked documentation proving that FC Barcelona paid almost 1.4 million euros (c. $1.5m) to the company DASNIL 95 SL during the years 2016, 2017, and 2018 - Negreira was the company’s sole shareholder.
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“I think this is the worst news in the history of Spanish football, not only for Barcelona, due to the real global impact it has had. It is a missile in the waterline of our football ”, assured, Lendoiro, who is “convinced that things have only just begun” in this case being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office.
“Now the investigations, judicial and journalistic, will begin; they will determine the year the relationship began. It was already established during José Luís Nuñez’s tenure (Barça president until 2000),” Lendoiro, who was president of Deportivo between 1988 and 2014, explained.
Depor’s meetings with Barcelona
Lendoiro’s Deportivo were direct rivals of Barcelona, competing for domestic trophies in the nineties and early 2000s, their most brilliant period, in which they won one league title, two Copas del Rey and three Spanish Super Cups. Depor were cruelly denied another league title in 1993/94, after Miroslav Djukic missed a penalty with 90 seconds of the final game remaining - and because of that, Barça were crowned champions.
“When the exact date of the beginning of the million-dollar professional relationship between Enríquez Negreira and Barcelona is known, there will be many clubs and fans, Deportivo and myself the first, who will remember certain incidents or those games against Barça, which we all have in memory, in which we had complained extremely harshly about the referee on duty. Back then, it was almost ‘accepted’ that ‘referees always help the great clubs,’” concluded Lendoiro for whom Barçagate is an “unprecedented scandal” in Spanish football.