Ex Barça coach Valverde denies testifying in Negreira scandal

The Negreira scandal alleges that soccer club FC Barcelona paid referee Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira to make calls in their favor. Negreira and his company are charged with receiving around €7m from Barcelona from 2001 to 2018.

Obviously, in 17 years, there have been several different managers of the team. It was reported earlier this week that the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office would summon former coaches Luis Enrique and Ernesto Valverde to testify.

Valverde denies witness claims

Luis Enrique was the coach at Barça from 2014 to 2017 and has already said he had no idea the alleged referee reports existed. Valverde took over in January 2017 and stayed with the team until 2020. For his part, he’s said he was not aware of the reports, but that “it’s common to have statistics about referees”. However, he denies being approached to testify.

“No one has called me, no matter how much it seems like it in the press,” said Valverde. “It’s a process that’s under investigation and that’s it. We’ll see what happens.”

“There are no parallel judgments to be made at all at this stage. You have to wait for events to unfold and that’s it. But when certain things are published, it doesn’t mean they’re going to happen, we’ll see,” he continued.

“The only time [Spanish prosecutors] questioned me, I answered, and that is also a situation that has become topical, but it follows a process and now here we are.”