Soccer is a machine for generating conflicting emotions. Parallel to the unofficial announcement that Leo Messi will not return to Barça but will pack his bags from Paris to Miami to play in the MLS, the Barça club offices received good news.
The case has many derivatives and requires prior explanation. As 'La Vanguardia' has been able to learn, UEFA has opened a file against Osasuna that will result in the exclusion of the Pamplona club from European competitions, specifically from the Conference League, a prize that it had obtained on the field of play by placing seventh in the league.
UEFA is now involved in a judicial process that has lasted for years, but which did not have a final ruling until last January, when the Supreme Court sentenced the president of Osasuna, two directors and the manager at the time for the crimes of appropriation improper, documentary falsification, accounting crime and sports corruption. It was proven that those involved agreed with two Real Betis footballers with influence in the locker room to pay them 650,000 euros to beat Valladolid. It was the 2012-13 season.
The first club to benefit from this measure will be Athletic Club, eighth-ranked in the League, which will take the vacant place left by Osasuna as soon as the UEFA sanction is officially confirmed.
The second club that will be able to make a favorable reading will be FC Barcelona, investigated for the Negreira case, with very similar characteristics to the Osasuna case. And it is that UEFA sets a clear precedent by not penalizing or opening a file on the Pamplona club until justice has finished its work without a possible option of appeal, that is, through the final ruling of the Supreme Court.
In this way, the Barcelona team could play the Champions League next season since the Negreira case is still sub judice. In the conversations between Joan Laporta, president of FC Barcelona, and his counterpart at UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin, the former always asked him precisely to let the Spanish justice act and respect the presumption of innocence before intervening.
