Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola on Saturday spoke about his former club Barcelona’s alleged payments to an Spanish referees’ committee official Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira. The treble-winning coach said he would wait for the probe to be completed before forming any ‘opinion’.
The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) offices in Madrid were stormed by Spanish police this week. Spain has intensified their probe against Barcelona’s alleged corrupt payments. Barca had already been pulled into that case when judge Joaquin Aguirre Lopez in September claimed that the Catalan giants may have benefited from corrupt officiating.
The payments were allegedly made to a referees’ committee member to facilitate favourable decisions in Barcelona games. The Spanish club had allegedly paid £7.4m to Negreira and his Dasnil 95 company between 2001 and 2018.
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Guardiola, who won numerous accolades during his five-year reign at the Catalonia club including a treble, weighed in on the incident, claiming he would rather provide his former club with the benefit of doubt till the probe is completed.
Guardiola said on Friday: “Wait and see…let the justice, the process (run). So far what I heard…I didn’t see or read, because I’m out of that, but I didn’t see Barcelona really, really, really, really pay a referee to take a benefit. I didn’t see that, I didn’t read it. That’s why I want to wait before I have an opinion, because Barcelona is going to defend what they have to do, and we will see.
“What I’m pretty sure is when Barcelona won, it was because they were better than the opponents. That I’m pretty convinced about right now – in our day. We won because we were far better than our rivals. And when they were not, they don’t win, they lose. But justice will decide what really happened.”
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