Big day for the former referee Xavier Estrada Fernandez y Miguel Angel Perezinvestigative journalist and court information Digital Freedom Group. The book that both have written together, The truth of the Negreira case. My fight against corruption (editorial The Book Sphere), goes on sale this Wednesday in Spain.
A work, of 264 pages, absolutely required reading to know the ins and outs of the Negreira case. This book comes to light 14 months after it was revealed that the FC Barcelona He was paying a total of 7.6 million euros to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), José María Enríquez Negreira, for at least 17 years. A year and two months after the biggest scandal in the history of Spanish sports was uncovered, there are still many unknowns to be resolved while the two justices (the ordinary and the sports) advance at a snail’s speed.
Interview with Federico…
This Tuesday, on the eve of the book’s launch, both Estrada Fernández and Miguel Ángel Pérez attended the program It’s Federico’s Morningof Federico Jimenez Losantosto tell all the ins and outs of both the Negreira case and the book itself.
“What worries me is that nothing is changing. They are going to build a Committee bunker. They will protect the system. They are going to defend themselves. The problem is the system. Would someone tell my son something if I were the president of a league?” Estrada told Federico.
…and presentation of the book
Hours later, the former referee and the journalist attended the presentation of the book with a few copies. The truth of the Negreira case. The fight against arbitration corruption at the Center for University Studies-CEDEU in the center of Madrid, where Estrada Fernández denounced that Negreira “had all the power” within the CTA, while criticizing that the current president of the Committee, Luis Medina Cantalejo“continue reinforcing the message that it was of no use.”
It should be remembered that Estrada, who in the book reviews his life from his beginnings in refereeing until his retirement in May 2021, was the first to raise his voice against Barça and Negreira, whom he reported to the Prosecutor’s Office in March 2023. shortly after the scandal broke. “Enríquez Negreira He had all the power, he had the information of each of the referees and assistants of all categories. “I knew who was going to be promoted and relegated,” said Estrada Fernández about the role played by the former vice president of the CTA who even He issued a “threat for not being part of the family” for wanting to have his own team of assistants when he was promoted to international.
The former Catalan referee recognizes that “when the case exploded” he began to “unite things” that he had experienced “on a personal level, which is not showing the reality of what is happening” and that the previous referees who had “spoken” had been “kicked out.” “Hear, see and keep quiet,” he defined as the committee’s mechanism, ensuring that the problem is that this way of proceeding “It has been replicated in all territorial delegations”.
In addition to Barça and Enríquez Negreira, Estrada Fernández also filed a complaint against the son of the former vice president of the CTA, the coach arbitral Javier Enriquez Romero, understanding that he felt “his honorability was attacked.” “I joined in 1996, I have been in the First Division for 30 years, many of them and I am outraged that a team has been paying the vice president of the referees because I never thought this could happen,” he criticized.
Regarding whether Barça benefited from Negreira’s maneuvers, the former referee says that “a judge must determine that because it is a totally open procedure that is being investigated.” “At first you are a novice, but then you mature and you see how the arbitration group works. When you don’t have the information it is logical to think that it is no longer important,” explained the Catalan, who denounces that there were “many people interested in the complaint not being will advance.”
Palo to Medina Cantalejo
“There was a lot of interest in diverting attention and stopping people from going deeper. Since last June, Medina Cantalejo signs a letter, at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, where he explains that Negreira had nothing to do with“, he recalled, regretting that the current president of the CTA “continues to reinforce the message that Negreira had nothing to do with it”, something that “multiplied” his indignation.
Related
Furthermore, he warned that “the referees who can reach the top are from the profiles of those in power.” “You only need to look at the promotion and relegation lists of recent years,” he noted. “In the end promotion equals money. It is not the same that a referee whistles 22 games in the season than 16. Being in the elite is not the same as being in other categories. You have to see the whole mechanism, how the committee works. I think it’s obvious,” said the Catalan.
“Vicarious model”
Estrada Fernández explained that “the figure of the arbitration assembly member is very important, who is not an arbitration representative, and who is part of the boards of directors, of the delegated commissions, and who are appointed by direct trust of the president of the CTA.” “They vote what they are told they have to vote for. Not everyone gets in there and that obviously means that you have privileges that others don’t.“he declared.
The former referee stressed that “the assembly members are not elected democratically or by their colleagues, but are appointed by the person in charge of responsibility.” “If you have that position, I appoint and promote the colleagues who are of my utmost confidence and promote them wherever I want,” he added.
“What these systems do is precisely promote this type of behavior within the Committee. Since all this has happened, it has been ‘bunkerized’, they are attacked and they use it,” said the man from Ilerda, who stated that “when it explodes case you can understand the threat, the functioning of many things at the federative level, promotions and relegations, how delegated commissions work…”.
“We have to change the entire system”
To explain the way in which this system worked independently of the person who occupied the position of top leader, the Catalan, Graduated in Psychology and specialist in Neuropsychology, referred to the well-known Pavlov dog theory that when “he heard the sound of the ‘bell’, he ate.” “When you live in a system like this, the vicarious model, the precedent is transferred to the generative level and that is how we all function. The problem with this is no longer the simple model, it is that we normalize things that are not normal,” he declared.
The former referee also pointed out that in the era of Sanchez Arminio At the head of the CTA, referees were valued by scores and a corrective index, two elements that disappeared in the 2018-2019 season, the first with Carlos Velasco Carballo as president. “There were no scores and the list of referees was arranged in alphabetical order,” he explained.
Therefore, the situation with arbitration cannot be solved only in the professional establishment. “This is a pyramid, we have to change everything, not just the professional, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 15,000 referees in the main field, changing only the professional would be a mistake, we must change the entire system,” he stated.
Why didn’t you speak before?
The former referee confessed to feeling “alone” in his fight against referee corruption, but stated that “Whoever wants to add to the complaint can still do so”. “I have some principles and some values” and he was clear that once the scandal broke out, he felt “his honor was violated”, which pushed him to publish this book that he had not planned to write about his career in arbitration.
Lastly, about why he has not spoken before and is now publishing the book, he said that “for contractual reasons” he could not and that he thought about holding a press conference on several occasions, but finally decided that the best way was to do it through a book, “explaining it in the first person.”
2024-04-17 00:33:09
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