Barça will be in the next edition of the Champions League defending the title of champion of the Spanish League, as this newspaper has already advanced and sources from the Barça club confirmed yesterday. The report of the two inspectors appointed by UEFA to investigate “a possible violation of the legal framework” of this body by Barcelona for the Negreira case He has shown himself in favor of the Barca team playing the 2023-24 Champions League.
The three meetings that Joan Laporta has held with the president of UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin, have also been helpful for a favorable solution for the Barça club after the outbreak of the case led to the risk of a possible exclusion from the tournament.
Mirjam Koller and Jean-Samuel Leuba, the two inspectors of the Ethics and Disciplinary Committee Those in charge of the investigation, recommend in their report to the UEFA Appeals Committee that they allow Barça to play the maximum continental competition.
Now, the Appeals Committee has ten days to make a decision, which should be favorable to the interests of the Catalan club with the report of the Ethics and Disciplinary Committee that it has in its possession.
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The highest body of European football is aware that the Negreira case, in which the payments of 7.3 million euros that Barcelona made to José María Enríquez Negreira, vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees of the Royal Spanish Federation between 1994 and 2018, supposedly due to arbitration and ‘scouting’ reports, is prosecuted in Spain.
So the most logical thing to do is to wait for a judge to issue a sentence before sanctioning Barça or definitively archive the file that opened the club on March 23. But the report from the two inspectors already allows us to confirm that Barça will play the next Champions League, as League champions and starting from pot 1 in the drawalong with Sevilla (Europa League champion), Manchester City, Bayern, PSG, Benfica, Napoli and Feyenoord.