"They took away a league from us" - Barcelona star hits back at claims stating the La Liga club benefitted from refereeing decisions
Jordi Alba is the latest Barcelona player to dismiss claims that referees helped the Catalan side. The Spaniard claimed that they had a league title stolen from them by the officials and handed to Atletico Madrid.
El Caso Negreira has been the talk of the town in Spain this year as reports claim the Catalan side paid a fee to Enriquez Negreira's company while he was the vice-president of the Referee's Committee.
Speaking to SPORT, Alba quickly dismissed suggestions that Barcelona benefited from referees ruling in their favor. He said:
"You can like a referee more or less, but I've never seen anything weird. I have never noticed that the referees have whistled in our favor."
The left-back claimed that Lionel Messi's goal against Atletico Madrid in 2014 was incorrectly ruled out by the linesman for offside. He said:
"They took a league from us. Against Atletico, the last game, a goal by Leo (Messi) was annulled for offside that was not. Atletico won the league with the draw. It was a cross, it bounced off a defender, it was not offside and our goal was disallowed. They took away a league from us."
Barcelona president comments on El Caso Negreira
Barcelona president Joan Laporta has vowed to fight the allegations against the club. He believes that they are innocent and are being trapped by external factors.
He released a video on his Twitter account and said:
"The campaign that we are suffering is no coincidence and its objective is to destabilize in the short term to the team and in the medium term to control and stay with Barca. I will have time to explain who, why and how they want to orchestrate this campaign."
He added:
"Have no doubt that we will defend ourselves. And not only that, we will also attack. But now we have to focus on encouraging our players because their first goal is to destabilize the team."
Barcelona are still under investigation for paying Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira more than €7 million over a nearly 20-year period. However, they are confident that will come out victorious from the case.