The curious reactions of Enríquez Negreira during an interview in 1992

“You didn’t become a millionaire because you didn’t want to”, dropped the journalist. Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira answered: “Nobody suggested me to make easy money. And if I had come across that, I wouldn’t tell them (laughs)”. It was the month of July 1992, date on which Enriquez Negreira he cut off his ponytail as a referee after being associated with the Catalan school for 26 years. In the context of that relaxed conversation with the journalist Tomás Guasch, published by “Mundo Deportivo”, Negreira gave his opinion on what should change in the arbitration “world”: “The challenge is to get people to trust the organization, which is not happening now. But come on, it would take this whole edition of the paper to explain everything that should change.” said.

“Barca have been champions when they deserved it and had a great team. The rest is nonsense”

The journalist insisted in a sarcastic tone and asked him if Joan Gaspartvice president of FC Barcelona at the time, would attend a hypothetical “beatification” of Jose Plaza, then president of the umpires. Negreira replied: “Between one and the other, the truth is that they take him to beatification on the spot, yes.” During that short interview, they also asked him if José Plaza’s ‘sport’ was to ‘kill’ Barça. Enriquez’s response was as follows: “Barça have been champions when they deserved it, when they had a great team, like now. The rest is nonsense.” insured.

“Nobody suggested me to make easy money. And if I had come across that, I wouldn’t tell them (laughs).”

When asked about how he refereed Real Madrid, Negreira recalled “The afternoon I sent poor Juanito to the Bernabéu and he was waiting for me in the locker room tunnel to apologize. He had a bad reputation, but he was a good guy.” In that interview, Negreira confessed that he would have “I enjoyed being a great footballer and making fortunes just like everyone else, because football is milk.” Finally, noticed “Nobody suggested me to make easy money. And if I had come across that, I wouldn’t tell them (laughs)”.

The interview caption, seen from the perspective of the passage of time, also has its crumb. It said like this: “A great referee leaves, a manager arrives who wants to march”

Today Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira He is the major protagonist in a ‘case’ that created an authentic earthquake in Spanish football, which erupted when it became known that he received payments of almost 7 million euros from FC Barcelona for 18 years, ​​​​when he held a place in the Technical Committee of Referees.

The Public Prosecution Service states in a paragraph of its complaint that “Barça through Presidents Sandro Rosell and Josep María Bartomeu a strictly confidential oral agreement with Enríquez Negreira, so that he, in his capacity as Vice President of the CTA and in exchange for money, would take actions favoring Barcelona in the decisions of the referees in the matches played by the club and therefore in the results of the competitions”.