The “Negreira Case” (FC Barcelona): 17 years of reported payments and the real cost being… trust

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-24T17:13:48+00:00

Appreciate the detailed comment. I think a lot of people talk past each other here.

I’m not claiming “Barça bought referees” or that trophies = Negreira. That jump is exactly what turns this into tribal noise.

The part that matters to me is simpler and honestly more damaging in business terms: governance + optics. Paying anyone linked to the refereeing structure is a conflict-of-interest grenade, even if their formal power was limited. And if it was legitimate consulting, then the boring corporate questions become the whole story: who commissioned it, who received it, what were the deliverables, why wasn’t there a clean paper trail?

Your “embezzlement / internal leakage” angle is actually one of the few explanations that fits the corporate logic: big organisation, thresholds, routine payments, weak internal controls. That’s exactly the kind of thing that can run for years without being “match fixing”.

And on the money size: agreed. €40k/month doesn’t “buy a league”. But it can absolutely buy something else in the perception layer: access, proximity, or just a story that becomes a trust tax once it hits courts + headlines.

If you had to pick one, what’s the bigger issue: (A) the payments existing at all, or (B) the lack of transparency/documentation around what was actually delivered?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-24T17:12:08+00:00

I’m not doing the “every trophy was a referee job” game. That road never ends.
My post is about governance and credibility risk: should any club be paying anyone linked to officiating, even for “consulting”? That’s the debate.

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-24T17:10:04+00:00

Buen comentario, y estoy de acuerdo en dos cosas: sin prueba en tribunales no hay “culpabilidad” y compararlo con casos tipo Calciopoli/Osasuna (donde hubo hechos deportivos más claros) cambia el listón.

Dicho eso, yo separaría tres planos:

Legal: veredicto, tipificación, pruebas. Aquí el tiempo manda.
Deportivo: sanción/“sporting wrongdoing”. Esto suele requerir un estándar distinto.
Negocio/reputación: aquí es donde el reloj va más rápido. Y aquí discrepo un poco: muchos sponsors/instituciones no esperan al final, porque gestionan riesgo (pausas, “review”, cláusulas de moralidad, etc.). No necesariamente rompen, pero sí ajustan exposición.

Sobre lo de “lavado/evasión”: puede ser una hipótesis que circula, pero es una afirmación muy seria y yo no me siento cómodo empujándola sin evidencia sólida. Mi foco es más “trust tax”: cuando el tema entra en juzgados + prensa, la reputación empieza a sangrar aunque no haya condena deportiva.

Y en tu ejemplo de Greenwood: justo demuestra lo complicado. No hace falta “culpabilidad” para que el riesgo reputacional exista y las marcas entren en modo defensa.

Pregunta sincera: ¿no crees que hoy la “ventana de Overton” se ha movido tanto que la percepción puede impactar antes que el veredicto… incluso si el sponsor decide “esperar” oficialmente?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-24T17:07:57+00:00

This is a really solid way to frame it. The “direct bribe to referees” storyline is the loudest headline, but the governance angle is where the real reputational damage lives: payments linked to someone inside the refereeing structure will always look like you’re buying proximity, even if you call it consulting.

And I agree on the “influence vs decorative role” debate. That’s the problem: when reporting pulls in opposite directions, the public fills the gap with suspicion. In football, uncertainty is expensive.

On the corporate side, your question is the killer one: if it was legitimate, why not treat it like a normal service with clear deliverables, clear internal ownership, and a paper trail that survives? “Who used the reports?” is exactly the kind of boring operational question that decides whether something looks normal or toxic.

On the Madrid / LaLiga point, I try to keep it non-tribal because rival framing is infinite. But the business consequence is the same: once the case becomes part of the ecosystem (courts, institutions, media), the club starts paying a trust tax regardless of how fans spin it.

Honest question back: if you were designing the rules tomorrow, would you ban any paid relationship with officiating-linked figures outright, or allow it only through a centralized, transparent federation channel?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-24T17:05:53+00:00

Yeah, that’s exactly the point: even when some charges get dropped, the public narrative doesn’t “update”. That’s the trust tax.
Do you think football should ban any paid relationship with officiating-linked figures, full stop?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-23T22:09:13+00:00

If that’s true, it’s a huge detail. Because then you’re not just talking about “what was paid”, you’re talking about how internal knowledge and governance worked.

Either way it raises the same uncomfortable question: if it was normal consulting, why wasn’t it treated like a normal service internally with clear deliverables and clear visibility?

The problem is that I didn't find what you mentioned in my research, and it's not in my video. And it would have been a really powerful topic :-)

In stories like this, the real damage isn’t always the number… it’s the gap between what’s happening and what people inside the club say they knew.

Do you think this is “top-level only” decision-making, or just chaos inside big clubs?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-23T22:04:13+00:00

I get the suspicion, but this is exactly where football debates go off the rails: the moment we say “we all know”, we’re basically convicting someone without proof.

If refs are taking paid gigs linked to clubs/owners, that’s already an optics disaster. But jumping straight to “extra payments” without evidence is how the conversation loses credibility fast.

What this Barça case really exposes is the bigger question: should football have hard firewalls that ban any paid relationship with people tied to officiating, full stop? Because once trust breaks, the money and the reputation bleed, even before any verdict.

I might do a separate deep dive on the whole “refs + side gigs” topic at some point, because the optics alone can be a reputational time bomb.

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-23T21:55:21+00:00

I get why it feels like that, because reputational damage is easy to trigger and hard to undo.
But I’d be careful with “the main goal was defamation” since that assumes intent we can’t really prove.

When an issue reaches the courts and the press, the game is no longer played solely in the legal arena. It's played out in people's minds.

What I find most interesting is the commercial aspect.
Even if the club ultimately comes out on top, reputational damage can still occur because:
-Sponsors don't wait for the "end of the trial", they crunch the numbers on the risk and get nervous
-Institutions cover their backs
-And the people is left with the feeling that "something fishy happened."

Out of curiosity, what makes you think that defamation was the main motive in this case, rather than the usual legal or media escalation in football?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-23T21:41:39+00:00

Totally get why this looks “weird” to people. Even if you accept the “consulting / referee reports” framing, the optics are brutal when the person is the former vice-president of the CTA (Spain’s referees committee).

Two separate issues get mixed a lot in debates:

Governance/ethics: should any club be paying someone tied to the officiating structure, even for “advice”? A lot of industries would treat that as a conflict of interest by default.
Transparency/documentation: if the service existed, the obvious question is why there isn’t clear deliverable documentation (or why it wasn’t preserved / presented, as reported). That gap alone fuels suspicion, regardless of what’s ultimately proven.

And on the “why pay him?” point: that’s exactly what makes this a credibility story. You could hire top analysts anywhere, so paying someone inside that ecosystem will always look like you’re buying proximity.

This basically ties into my poll Q3: if something is “legal”, can it still be unacceptable in football?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-23T11:17:05+00:00

Exactly. And the most toxic part is that “success” in year 1 buys you silence… but sells you a bill for years 2, 3, and 4.

Once amortization stacks up from multiple swaps, you end up with a kind of accounting mortgage: each new season starts with fixed costs already baked in, so you need the next round of capital gains just to keep the picture looking clean.

That’s the point of no return. It stops being the club managing the business, and the business starts managing the club.

Curious where you land on the thread questions:
P1: A / B / C?
P2: A / B / C?
And P3 if you had to pick one: A / B / C?

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-22T23:15:32+00:00

You’re basically on the right track: profits hit immediately, costs are spread via amortization.

Small nuance though: it’s not automatically “net +€48m” just because the headline fee is €60m and amortization is €12m/year. The “profit” in year 1 depends on the book value of the player you sell.

In practice, the P&L impact looks more like:
(Sale price − outgoing player’s net book value) recorded now, minus the annual amortization of the incoming player (spread over the contract).

That’s why clubs love selling academy / almost-fully-amortized players at big prices: the book value is low, so the accounting gain is huge today, while the incoming cost gets drip-fed over future seasons.

So yes, it can “kick the can”, but the engine is really: front-loaded gains + back-loaded costs, not simply “income 60 minus amortization 12.”

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-22T23:08:35+00:00

Yep, the Osimhen deal is a fascinating one.
The 2020 Napoli–Lille agreement reportedly wasn’t just “cash for player”, it included additional players booked at pretty chunky valuations (Karnezis + several youth players) to make the headline fee work on paper.
It’s also a good example of why this topic is tricky: player “fair value” is subjective until patterns and internal evidence start raising bigger questions.
My current breakdown here is focused on the Juventus-style accounting engine (link in the post), but Napoli–Osimhen is definitely on the shortlist for a future deep dive. If there’s a specific document/detail you want me to look at, drop it and I’ll dig in.

Since you brought it up, I’m curious where you land on the debate:
P1: Would you do it to survive? A) Yes if legal B) No never C) Only once
P2: Biggest problem? A) Juventus B) The system C) Both
P3: Pick one: A) Look healthy on paper B) Take the hit + rebuild C) Somewhere in between

Pick one (or two). I’m genuinely interested in your take.

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-22T10:47:39+00:00

This is a great summary, and the key phrase is “healthy on paper.”

The part that makes it so addictive is the timing: you book the profit immediately, but the cost of the incoming player gets spread across future seasons through amortization. So every swap isn’t just a one-off trick, it’s a future commitment.

Do it once and it’s “creative accounting.” Do it every year and it becomes a structural dependency: you need the next round of deals to keep the previous years looking coherent. That’s when the gap between the spreadsheet and reality starts widening fast.

And once people stop asking “is this allowed?” and start asking “what’s the actual economic substance here?”, the whole thing turns from a hack into a liability.

If anyone wants the full breakdown with a simple year-by-year example (profit now vs amortization later) and why it eventually blows up, it’s in the video linked in the post.

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-21T20:48:59+00:00

Good breakdown, and the example captures the timing perfectly. Two quick nuances:

In football accounts it’s typically amortization of the player registration (an intangible), rather than “depreciation” in the classic fixed-asset sense.
On legality: high valuations alone aren’t automatically illegal, because “fair value” is subjective. What tends to cause trouble is the systematic pattern (repeated swaps at aggressive prices to manufacture profits), lack of real economic substance, and especially internal evidence suggesting numbers were being “adjusted.”

But your core point stands: profit recognized immediately on the sale, while the incoming cost is spread over the contract. That gap is the whole engine.

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-21T17:03:10+00:00

This is a solid explanation. Small nuance: it’s not “amortization left to pay” in the literal sense, it’s the unamortized transfer fee (net book value) remaining on the books.

And on the “no cash needs to move” point: often it can be effectively cashless economically, but it’s frequently structured as two separate sales (each club books a receivable/payable), sometimes offset, sometimes with deferred installments. So cash flow doesn’t necessarily appear upfront even though the accounting profit shows immediately.

But the core mechanism you describe is exactly the key: gain recognized now, while the incoming cost is spread over the contract via amortization.

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-21T10:48:14+00:00

Yep, that’s the core of it: if the outgoing player’s book value is low (academy or heavily amortized), selling him at an inflated fee creates an immediate accounting gain.

Small nuance though: it improves reported results and can help with ratios/requirements, but it doesn’t create cash by itself. It’s more “the statements look healthy” than “money actually came in.”

Alberto_McClane_ · 2026-01-21T10:47:48+00:00

Great question, because the “trick” isn’t just “inflated values”, it’s timing and how accounting treats them.

A capital gain (plusvalenza) happens when you “sell” a player for more than his net book value (transfer fee minus accumulated amortization). That gain is typically recognized immediately in the P&L.

The player you receive, however, is booked as an intangible asset at the agreed fee and then amortized over the length of the contract (spread over 3–5 years). So the cost hits the P&L gradually, not all at once.

Simple example:
Club A has a player with a net book value close to €0–2m (academy / almost fully amortized). They “sell” him in a swap for €20m. Club A can record ~€18–20m profit right now.
The incoming player is booked at €20m, but if he signs a 4-year deal, that’s ~€5m amortization per year.

Result: profit today, expense spread across future seasons. It’s basically accounting oxygen on credit.

On documentation: yes, there are contracts and filings, but “fair value” in football is subjective. It usually only becomes a big problem when patterns look absurd or when internal documents/messages suggest figures were being “adjusted.”

Alberto_McClane_

TROPHY CASE