UEFA chief slams Barça for 'Negreira case: "An extremely serious situation"

UEFA has already announced it they will open an investigation against Barcelona for "a possible violation of UEFA's legal framework", and now the organisation's president, Aleksander Ceferin, has spoken out about the 'Negreira case'.

"Barcelona? The situation is extremely serious," he said in an interview with the Slovenian newspaper Ekipa. 

"I have informed myself and the situation is extremely serious. It is so serious that, in my opinion, it is one of the most serious in football that I have ever seen," said the UEFA chief. 

He went on to add: "I cannot comment directly on this for two reasons. Firstly, because we have an independent disciplinary committee in charge of this. And secondly, because I have not dealt with this matter in detail. At the level of the Spanish league, of course, the matter is time-barred and can have no competitive consequences, but the proceedings are ongoing at the level of the Spanish civil prosecutor's office. But as far as UEFA is concerned, there is nothing time-barred."

Super League

Ceferin, also one of the biggest critics of the European Super League, will be re-elected president of the football body for the period 2023-2027 at next Wednesday's Executive Committee congress in Lisbon.

For the breakaway competition, he also had some words: "Apparently they are still trying to do something, but in my opinion, just to improve their negotiating position a bit and try to negotiate something with us. They haven't quite grasped that we have nothing to negotiate."

At the same time, he was not shy about throwing a 'stick' at "football's saviours," as he calls them: "Of course, ego also plays a certain role for some of these people, and because of this, they still do something in this area, because over the years they have got used to everyone nodding their head at their purposes."

Meeting with A22

In the same interview, he revealed that: "We had a meeting with the company A22, which took over the management of the interests of these three clubs (Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus) and even my colleagues objected to my meeting with them. They simply did not see the reason and the need for me to meet with a promotion company, but I still wanted this meeting so that no one would accuse me of inaccessibility and arrogance. But I didn't want to be alone in this meeting, so we called the clubs, we called the leagues, we called the fans and we called the FIFpro union." 

"This is your Waterloo"

"Everyone was in the room when the A22 representatives arrived, and certainly you have never seen such a disdainful attitude as these representatives encountered from everyone present. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told them: 'This is your Waterloo.' The head of the England supporters' group told them: "The UK has had more prime ministers in the last two months than supporters (for the project). Et cetera.' They could see that this was a project nobody wanted. It's a shame this is still dragging on, it probably wouldn't exist anywhere without the support of the media."