One week away from Barça-Madrid in the League at the Camp Nou. When it was no longer expected. At a psychologically important moment. A little more than two hours after the match between the madridistas and Espanyol yesterday at the Bernabéu. At that time, Florentino Pérez decided to take action in the controversial Negreira case and announced that he has called his board of directors "urgently" for 12 noon today. He does so "given the seriousness of the accusations made by the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office against FC Barcelona and two of its presidents for well-founded suspicions of corruption and their relations with whoever was the vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees, José María Enríquez Negreira" .
This is how the statement issued by the white club reads yesterday and which concludes by saying that they are meeting "in order to decide on the actions that Real Madrid deems appropriate in relation to this matter." It will be necessary to see what "actions" the Madrid entity decides to undertake to further calibrate the magnitude of the Madrid maneuver. What is clear is that Madrid's idea is to appear as a private prosecution once the case is investigated, as they have already announced that both LaLiga and the Spanish Federation would also do. This determination of the Madrid board of directors was "unanimous" last night, although it escapes no one that at Real Madrid practically what its president indicates or resolves is done and said.
From Barça, increasingly pressured on all fronts, there is also an expectation of what Florentino Pérez's board of directors resolves. From the Blaugrana club a certain surprise was transferred by the white statement. Barça's position is that it will not do anything or declare anything in this regard until it knows what Real Madrid decides after the meeting of its leadership. Based on that, they will make the decision to answer or not.
Meanwhile, sources from the white club have commented to this newspaper that the situation "was already unsustainable" and that "the social pressure" of Madrid fans and season ticket holders was very great. In the social forums it was a clamor. It should be remembered that a group of white partners has started a campaign to collect signatures for Real Madrid to take action against Barça in this case. In this sense, in the classic cupbearer at the Bernabéu a few days ago, photocopies of 500-euro bills with the face of Joan Laporta were already distributed and cries of "corruption in the Federation" were heard.
Yesterday those screams were already reproduced from minute 1, led by a group of Espanyol fans present in Chamartín. At that moment they were timidly seconded by the rest of the stadium. Then others from "Barça always stealing" arrived.
It is true that yesterday's shouts were less continuous and followed than in other games and that these protests always come as a result of referee decisions that Madrid fans understand are detrimental to them. They rarely occur in placid matches.
Madrid's movement comes one day after the Prosecutor's Office filed a complaint against Barcelona, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu for the Negreira case for the crimes of corruption between individuals, unfair administration and false documentation.
Until now, Madrid had maintained silence on the matter, only broken on February 25 by its director of institutional relations, Emilio Butragueño, when he said: "You have to respect the times of justice. We must wait for the Prosecutor's investigations to conclude," Butragueño said then.
Seen with a certain perspective, those words were a clue for the meeting that Florentino Pérez has called for today.
Madrid took a different strategy from the beginning to that of the rest of the clubs in the League. Almost a week after the Negreira case broke out, the Spanish teams issued a statement "rejecting and repudiating" the acts allegedly committed by Barça and showing their full support for the actions of LaLiga. At the request of Atlético de Madrid and its CEO, Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, they tried to reach an agreement to write a joint statement that denounced the case, but it was not possible because Barça refused... and Madrid, which preferred to put Profile. At the other extreme, the first to show their concern publicly were Espanyol and Sevilla.
If the white team ends up demonstrating emphatically against Barça in the Negreira case today, the first rift between the two teams will open since Joan Laporta returned to the Camp Nou easy chair a couple of years ago.
Since then both presidents have lived an idyll of interests, manifested above all as visible heads of the Super League and as main opponents of the figure of the president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas. Within the scope of this common strategy in their struggle against UEFA and LaLiga, white immobility was understood in the case of Barcelona's payments to the former vice president of the referees. A significant change in this matter could lead to a major fissure in this cordial agreement.
And all this, just a few days before Madrid visits the Camp Nou next Sunday in a game that could be key to the outcome of the championship.
After the match against Espanyol, the white coach, Carlo Ancelotti, was asked his opinion about the statement from his club, but the coach did not want to go into details: "Tomorrow (for today) there is a meeting of the board of directors, I will I refer to the club. I prefer to focus on the next game”, stated the Italian.
Ancelotti, whenever he has been asked about it – last Friday included – has limited himself to answering that “now there is no corruption in Spanish or European football”.
When he has been insisted, in the line of whether that means that there was before, he has never wanted to be more precise.
Emilio Butragueño limited his statements after the game to the club's media, but did not want to talk about what might happen at today's meeting. He only talked about next week's sporting challenge against Liverpool on Wednesday and Barcelona on Sunday. After months and months of excellent institutional relations between Barça and Madrid, the scenery may change.
