La Liga in the bag, but Barcelona still face huge problems

BARCELONA: Barcelona may have won the La Liga title on Sunday (May 14), but their outstanding domestic campaign has been somewhat overshadowed by turmoil off the pitch including deepening financial problems and a refereeing scandal that could drag on for years.

Spanish prosecutors in March filed a complaint over alleged payments Barcelona made from 2001 to 2018 totalling €7.3 million (US$8 million) to firms owned by former refereeing official Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira. A Barcelona court has agreed to take on the case.

Also in March, European soccer's governing body UEFA opened its own formal investigation into the club, looking into the same payments.

The club has denied any wrongdoing, saying that it paid an external consultant who supplied it with "technical reports related to professional refereeing", something many clubs do.

But Enriquez Negreira was the vice-president of the refereeing committee of the Spanish Football Association - one of the highest refereeing officials in the country - from 1993 to 2018, covering the entire period concerned.

However the case may play out it has dealt a massive blow to the club's image, and could continue to do so as the legal process and UEFA's separate probe drag on.

And it comes at a time when Barcelona are already facing huge accounting problems related to their massive wage bill, to the COVID-19 pandemic and to the club's €1.6 billion renovation project.

Restricted by La Liga's Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, Barca were unable to re-sign club great Lionel Messi, who left as a free agent for Paris St Germain in the summer of 2021.

According to La Liga, Barca are still about €200 million over the cap and remain unable to register new contracts signed months ago with defender Ronald