July 28 – Barcelona have been provisionally cleared to play in the 2023-24 Champions League despite an ongoing UEFA investigation into the club’s involvement in a refereeing scandal.
Spanish prosecutors in March filed a complaint over alleged payments Barcelona made from 2001 to 2018 totalling €7.3 million to a company owned by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the former vice president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee.
Barcelona has consistently denied any wrongdoing or conflict of interest, saying it paid for technical reports on referees but never tried to influence their decisions in games.
The affair escalated when 18 of the 20 La Liga clubs issued a statement to express “deep concern” over the situation, and Barcelona president Joan Laporta said the club would launch an internal investigation into the payments.
UEFA also opened their own formal investigation earlier this year but said in a statement: “FC Barcelona is provisionally admitted to take part in the 2023-24 UEFA club competitions. A future decision on admission/exclusion from the UEFA club competitions is reserved.”
“FC Barcelona is obliged to keep the Ethics and Disciplinary Inspectors (EDI) informed of the progress of the ongoing investigations proactively and to provide the EDIs with all the documents and information they request.
“The EDIs in charge of the case are invited to continue and finalise their investigation and to send a further report to the UEFA Appeals Body if and when they consider that the admission/exclusion of FC Barcelona should be assessed.”
Being allowed to take part will come as a massive relief to Barca who crashed out at the group stage of Europe’s top club competition last season and were then knocked out of the Europa League by Manchester United.
Their place in the Champions League group stage is worth tens of millions of euros – earned by winning the Spanish league last season – and could have been at risk from the so-called ‘Caso Negreira’ case.
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