advice to footballers of up to 3,700 euros, the other business of Negreira’s son

BarcelonaThe Negreira case has not only served to check the payments that Barça made to the former vice-president of referees for almost two decades. It has also allowed the other businesses that José María Enríquez Negreira and his son, Javier, related to the world of football to come to light. The summary, to which the ARA has had access, highlights a series of incomes in the current account of Soccercam SL, company owned by Javier Enríquez and which was in charge of holding counseling sessions for referees and footballers. The report of the Tax Agency highlights that between 2016 and 2019 the company received income worth almost 78,000 euros, most of it in terms of coaching. Of the total, there are around 26,000 euros recorded as unjustified earnings.

The Soccercam company promoted these services on social networks, where you could see pictures of Javier Enríquez giving the sessions. Several footballers, most of them with a past in the lower categories of the Spanish national team, applied for them. Keko Gontán paid 7,900 euros between 2016 and 2018, when he played for Malaga and Valladolid, divided into fourteen payments that ranged between 300 and 1,200 euros. But the one who made the biggest bill was Coke Andújar, current footballer of Ibiza, who paid up to 3,700 euros at once. In total, he invested 7,000 euros in coaching of Negreira’s son between 2017 and 2018, when he played for the German Schalke 04.

Luis López Marmol was playing for Espanyol B between 2017 and 2019 when he spent up to 5,100 euros on advice. Barça B player Sergi Palencia spent 800 euros in February 2018. And his father, Julián, had invested 400 just two months before. Boris Garrós spent €600 in 2019 while playing for Politehnica Iasi in Romania. And the Portuguese Gus Ledes, also in 2019, invested 1,900 euros while playing for Numancia. None of the players were ever called up by the absolute selection.

Habits and tastes of collegiates

But the main source of income for the Soccercam SL company was Barça. Between 2015 and 2018, Negreira’s son delivered at least two reports to the club every week, about the refereeing triplet that would referee the first and second teams the following weekend or in the Cup. The reports, which are also included in the summary, focused on the refereeing style of the collegiates, but some of them also contained information about their habits and tastes. For example, José María Sánchez Martínez was detailed as practicing pilates; of Javier Iglesias Villanueva, who was a fan of the theater, and of Iñaki Vicandi Garrigo, who used to ask for a massage before the game. “From this moment is when he begins to concentrate to referee with a better level of activation for the competition”, the analysis underlines.

When he gave a statement to the police, Enríquez justified that his work included this kind of information “to indicate to the club how to better serve” the members. But the reports contain information about the referees’ marital status, whether or not they have children, their training and what they do. In addition, other comments are made. Of Jesús Gil Manzano, it is recommended to “treat him with care and facilitate a comfortable arbitration”, while of Carlos Velasco Carballo it is emphasized that “he is interested in taking great care of the club’s relationship”, because “in addition to the fact that he is a of the best Spanish referees, he is one of the candidates to become president of the Technical Committee of Referees”.

At the end of the month, Negreira’s son was charging between 6,000 and 7,000 euros for the advice. Unlike his father, he was not paid directly by the club, but by former member of the Barça sports commission Josep Contreras, now deceased, through one of his companies. He was also the one to whom I handed the reports, usually in a cafe near his house or at the Hotel Princesa Sofia, very close to the Camp Nou. Enríquez explained to the police that he had always “intended to work directly for the club”, but Contreras told him that that system was better, so as not to directly link his father’s surname to Barça. In 2018, when it was decided to dispense with the services of the Negreiras, the son specifically asked to meet with former president Josep Maria Bartomeu to try direct recruitment again.

Finally, he ended up meeting two high officials of the club who confirmed to him that they were doing without him “for financial reasons”. It is the same argument that Bartomeu gave when he testified to the police. The former president admitted that he knew that Enríquez was paid for his arbitration reports and justified them for “sporting reasons”. In fact, the former president said that it seemed “absurd” to reach the conclusion that Barça paid the Negreiras to benefit from the favor of the Technical Committee of Referees, of which José María Enríquez Negreira was vice-president until 2018. as the Prosecutor’s Office maintains in the complaint.