Barcelona got favourable calls against PSG in ‘Remontada’ game, did not pay referees

Barcelona’s payment to referees for over a decade has become the talk of the town. The club insist that the financial transactions were only to receive reports on referees and their decisions while the prosecution believes that the Blaugranas used their financial muscle to skew decisions.

COPE brings to light one such report that Barcelona received from Jose Enriquez Negreira about their infamous comeback win over PSG in the 2016-17 UEFA Champions League.

The report provides an analysis of the decisions taken by the referee on the night, Deniz Aytekin and a summary of all the calls on the night that could have gone either way.

As mentioned in the report by the former vice president of the technical committee of referees, Barcelona received more favourable calls in ambiguous situations against PSG at Camp Nou on March 8th 2017.

Javier Macherano’s crunching challenge on Angel Di Maria in the 84th minute could have been given as a penalty to the Parisiens according to Negreira but the referee opted to err on the side of caution and favoured Barcelona in that instance.

The report adds that the penalty Luis Suarez won late in the game to make it 5-1 could have gone either way. However, with no VAR at the time and the emotions of a Champions League game, the referee’s decision to award the penalty cannot be blamed.

It is vital to note that the report made by Negreira was after the game against PSG. The sole motive for generating such analytics was to aid the Blaugranas in understanding referees better, a practice that is common in world football.

Nowhere in the report is there a mention of Barcelona paying the referee on the night of the game.

The same file where the aforementioned report was found is said to contain reports in the same format about all of Barcelona’s UCL games that season. Further, such analytics were generated even for La Liga and Copa del Rey games.