“I’ve been in arbitration for 40 years and this is one of the saddest moments I’ve experienced”
MADRID, 16 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), Luis Medina Cantalejo, pointed out this Thursday that “he has never” received, during his professional life, “neither a hint nor an advice” so that, in his arbitration work, he could carry out any “decision-making that would benefit one team or another”, at the same time that he assured that he would put “both hands on the fire” for all generations of Spanish referees”.
“I put both hands on the fire for all the generations of Spanish referees who with honesty, sacrifice and a lot of work have left their skin on the fields so that things went well. This is not Spanish football, this is not refereeing Spanish and simply wanted to clarify this so that there was no problem”, said the president in statements to the RFEF.
Medina Cantalejo made this reflection after it became known on Wednesday that the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether a former vice president of the CTA received payments from FC Barcelona for advising the Barça club while he was in office.
In addition, the head of Spanish arbitration stated that this is “one of the saddest moments” that he has experienced in the 40 years that he has been related to arbitration. “I have been in arbitration for 40 years and this is one of the saddest moments I have experienced. I have been in First Division for 11 years and I can tell everyone that there has been absolutely nothing, not a hint or advice, neither to me nor to to my teammates, about having some type of inclination in results or making decisions that would benefit one team or another, never in life,” he said.
About Enríquez Negreira, Medina Cantalejo assured that he was a person with “minimal” contact with the referees, also indicating that he did not know the powers he had within the CTA. “We do not know what powers he had. He has been there for many years, but he has been in the shadows and he was a man to whom we cannot decline any kind of jurisdiction in the Committee. We are going to take part in the cause, together with the Federation, and we will collaborate as much as possible with the Prosecutor’s Office, with documentation and whatever they request,” he said.
“For the staff of referees that we were at then, it was a person who was vice president, who was on the board of directors, but we did not really know what his role was. We saw each other twice a year, once in preseason and another in the middle of the season. “Contact with the referees was minimal. We were with him, he gave us some papers about the group he was in: group 1, group 2, group 3 depending on the qualification and nothing else. Nothing more”, he added.
Finally, the former collegiate disassociated the administration of the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Luis Rubiales, from any connection with the former vice president of the CTA. “Since 2018, in which Luis Rubiales joined the Federation, Enríquez Negreira has not been part of any federative level or the Technical Committee of Referees. This is not throwing balls out. Since the arrival of Luis Rubiales, each referee has They have to declare that they do not have any type of possible conflict of interest that could affect their work because they are linked to a team,” he concluded.