I haven't followed this very closely.
But Barca don't deny that the payments were made - they just claim the payments were legit?
They paid this guy to do basic analysis for them. And paid him extremely well for it. Over a period of many years. During which he was a high-ranking member of the refereeing committee. And when he left the committee, the arrangement came to an end.
That about it?
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Paying a high-ranking member of the refereeing committee to do basic analysis is...what you do, isn't it? I mean, if you're mes que un club, you surely don't settle for anything less.
You forgot the part where throughout that period, Barcelona's balance of refereeing decisions was so unbelievably beneficial that seeing visual representations of it (there are some earlier on the thread) is downright cartoonish, and far exceeds what any amount of "but they played tiki-taka with 75% possession!" can ever explain. Or that their two rivals, Real Madrid and Espanyol, happen to be the two teams at the opposite end of the spectrum with the very worst balance.
I mean, you generally expect strong, attack-oriented teams to get more penalties and opposition red cards than average, but Barcelona's balance is so far out of proportion that it's comical, and anyone who chalks that up to their style of football is out of their mind. There's something like ten red cards to their opponents for each one to them. No team in the history of the sport has ever come even slightly close to such a record. It's completely unrealistic.
I tried to look it up at the time, and though it was kind of hard to find concise accountings of it, the normal situation across Europe was for the most dominant team in the league to get 30-50% more pens/reds to their advantage than the teams in the same leagues with the very worst records. Barcelona's is like... many, many, many times more favorable than that. They could have played with 100% possession for entire seasons and it would still be extremely suspicious to have come out ahead in the balance to such a degree.
For the period that this case pertains to, they're at a balance +77 red cards. Their opponents have had
seventy-seven more red cards than they have. Consider that the norm is for any given team to have somewhere between 0 and 5 red cards for and against them throughout a season. I mean, who can even see that +77 tally and ever believe there's nothing fishy? For reference, Real Madrid are at -12 for the same period. Even if you subtract all of Pepe's and Ramos' reds, they'd be around +10. Could anyone possibly claim that Barcelona have been 800% more attack-oriented than Real Madrid? It would be a declaration of idiocy.
Anyone who can look at that and think the refs haven't been bending over backwards to help Barcelona is patently insane. It was also obvious when watching their actual games, but even if you don't, the statistics themselves are impossible to dismiss. While it doesn't directly prove that this is what Barcelona paid for, one would have to be
very naïve to claim that it isn't suspicious. What are the chances that they've been secretly paying the refs,
and getting incredibly favorable treatment from them, but there's no connection at all between the two? I mean, come on.
