Three months ago John Laporta y Florentino Perez appeared together and smiling at the Ritz Mandarin Hotel in Madrid in the presentation of Bernd Reichart, CEO of A22, the promoter of the Super League, of the project in the presence of both presidents, days after the opinion issued by the General Advocate of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The Super League, perfect alibi
The complicity of both in an act that was looked at with suspicion by both fans was striking. The good harmony of the whites and the Catalans, with the latter activating all possible levers to revive the club, was not very common. But the common interest in moving forward with the Super League seemed like a sufficient alibi to explain some gestures of complicity never seen before, like Barcelona itself delegating the representative of Madrid in a meeting with LaLiga.
But in the last hundred days, Florentino Pérez has seen how his two partners were involved in sports scandals that ended up in court. In Italy Juventus was sanctioned on January 20 for the ‘Plusvalías case’. The Italian Football Federation found the Turin club guilty of fraud in the investigation which confirmed that Vecchia Signora leaders had manipulated player transfers, diverting them for illicit enrichment. FIGC sanction that has punished Juventus with the loss of 15 points and the disqualification of its leaders, including Andrea Agnelli (2 years) and the former player and technical secretary Pavel Nedvev (8 months).
Negreira case, turning point
And in Spain on February 15 a piece of news broke that has ended up creating an irreparable fracture between Florentino and Laporta. Barça disbursed, according to official sources, 7.3 million euros to the then vice president of the Technical Arbitration Committee, José María Enríquez Negreira, between 2001 and 2018, to “ensure that no decisions were made against the club, that everything was neutral. FC Barcelona considered that the team was being harmed and other teams were being favored.”
The judge admitted the formal accusation made by the Prosecutor’s Office in which attributes to the Barça club, as a legal person, a continuous crime of corruption in business in the sports field and points to two former presidents of the club, Sandro Rosell (2010-2014) and Josep María Bartomeu (2014-2020). The complaint is directed against Barcelona and against five natural persons. In addition to Bartomeu, Rosell and Negreira, two more managers from Bartomeu’s stage appear: the former executive director Óscar Grau and the former director of professional sports Albert Soler.
Laporta suspends the directive lunch
And in the face of these serious accusations, the white club decided to enter the scene and appeared as a private prosecution in the case to have all the documentation generated by the investigation. A movement that has finished breaking that interested love that existed between the Madrid leader and the culé hero. Until Laporta has decided to suspend the directive lunch for this classic in Barcelona this Sunday.
Decision that has been contested by Florentino Pérez suspending his trip to Barcelona, according to the newspaper El Mundo. The president will not be in the Camp Nou box with his Super League partner, absence that did not even occur when he was elected white president and snatched Luis Figo from Barça.
The incident comes at the worst moment, with the ruling of the CJUE on the possible monopoly of UEFA in the Champions League about to be known. A clash, that of the Noriega Case, which ends up destroying the foundations of the Super League project, in which Florentino has been greatly diminished after the scandals carried out by his two founding partners. Whoever wins tonight at the Camp Nou wins, he loses the Super League. The spite, the same to which Rosalía sings, whose Motomami album the Catalans will advertise today on their shirts, has finished breaking the idyll between Florentino and Laporta.
