In 2020, a heated claim emerged from the football world when Negreira, then a former referee and longtime figure within the Technical Commission of Referees, suggested to Fútbol Club Barcelona that he could assist with VAR decisions. This offer came two years after his departure from the club, a departure tied to the leadership of Josep María Bartomeu. The revelation appeared in El Mundo, shedding light on a period when discussions around officiating and video assistance to referees were intensely scrutinized.
Negreira, who had once been among the top referees in the pecking order between 2016 and 2018, reportedly maintained a long-standing relationship with Barcelona spanning seventeen years. He reportedly reached out to the Barça camp with a straightforward invitation: if there was interest, they should contact him. According to El Mundo, the message carried a readiness to lend expertise in the use of video refereeing, a system that had begun to shape decisions on the field in ways that many clubs watched with wary interest.
The response from Barcelona, however, remained distant. The club leadership, including Bartomeu, had decided in 2018 to distance themselves from Negreira’s involvement, effectively ending any potential collaboration. When Negreira tried again to renew contact, the landscape of football was already shifting as the world faced the peak of a global pandemic. The interruption to the league schedule slowed competition, with the season resuming months later and concluding in July. Real Madrid emerged as champions under Zinedine Zidane, a season that many observers felt was colored by contentious VAR calls that the azulgrana perceived as biased. Barcelona, in that moment, believed the system had not treated them fairly during a period when VAR was being introduced into the league for the first time, marking a new era for the sport in Spain. The club’s perception of officiating and the integrity of the calls formed a backdrop to the broader discussion about how video refereeing decisions influence outcomes on the pitch, a topic that clubs across Europe continued to debate in the wake of Negreira’s past involvement and the evolving role of technology in refereeing.
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