In the midst of the controversy of the ‘Negreira case’ and the alleged bribes of FC Barcelona to the referees, the former Spanish referee Alfonso Pino Zamorano, took the floor on said matter to talk about the management of José María Enríquez Negreira as vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) and deny that the culé team was favored.
In an interview with the radio program ‘El Partidazo de COPE’, Pino Zamorano, who was active between 2001 and 2007, denied that Negreira or someone else gave them orders to favor the Barça team. “In no game, never, have they told me ‘be good to Barça. I am convinced that no teammate, no referee, has received anything”, he said.
“Nobody ever told us who has to win or lose; if not, one of us would have said so. It is impossible for a referee to say that he deliberately favored Barça, I sincerely believe it. I have even bathed in pools with the Atleti and Madrid shields, ”he commented.
In this sense, the former referee let it be known that he whistled at Barcelona for “five, six or seven games, no more”, while recalling the moments in which the culé team “was eliminated by Figueres in the Cup” or “the Betis came back from 1-3 against Barcelona”.
On the other hand, he took the time to analyze and describe the former vice president of the CTA according to the time they coincided. “He was a merely decorative figure and had no influence. The deal I had with Negreira was always cordial. Nobody could imagine this. One of the functions that Negreira had was to call the referees who were promoted and descended. He didn’t decide, he just communicated it,” he explained.
Finally, he indicated something that other former referees have also said, that Barcelona paid Negreira millions for a service that was not going to help them directly at all, or at least it was not for the judges to benefit them in any way.
“When you pay money to a vice president of the referees, you intend to benefit from something, or at least not be harmed. What Barça wanted is for the referees not to harm them. Negreira sold smoke and they bought it,” he said.
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