Barça will play the Champions League next season. The club was fully confident in it but was pending not to receive a sanction for the investigation of the Negreira case. UEFA informed him this Friday that he has the placet to play the highest continental competition. Only the ratification of the UEFA Appeals Committee is missing but it is a mere formality.
Jean Samuel Leuba and Mirjam Koller Trunz, the two inspectors from the highest European football body, have concluded the report. UEFA decided to open an investigation into the club on March 23 in the midst of a hot wave for the Negreira case, the thorny issue of the club's payment of 7.3 million to the former vice president of the Spanish referees' committee between 2001 and 2018.
Since then, the president of Barcelona, Joan Laporta, intensified contacts with the president of UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin, to try to avoid a punishment for the next season and so that the club would not be condemned sportingly until there was a final conviction. where appropriate, by ordinary justice. The judicial process is now open and underway. In this sense, the announcement of a sanction against Osasuna for a match-fixing case after a final ruling by the Supreme Court was already a good omen for Barcelona, since the case of the Navarrese team has dragged on for years without UEFA having pronounced.
In this way, Barça will be in the hype of the seeds in the Champions League in the draw for the group stage on August 31 along with Sevilla, Manchester City, Bayern, PSG, Benfica, Naples and the Feyenoord
A few weeks ago, UEFA asked Barça for more information on the Negreira case and sent them a 71-question questionnaire in search of more details on the matter. The club proceeded to answer them one by one. Since then, Barcelona has been waiting for confirmation of its contest in the Champions League, since the Spanish Federation had also given its approval and had made it known to UEFA when also formally processing its participation.
