BARCELONA, Spain—Barcelona, the team that once awed the soccer world with its beautiful style on the field and its social commitment to being “more than a club,” is in danger of tarnishing its reputation with a scandal of its own making.
Although the club denies doing anything wrong, a Spanish state prosecutor is probing Barcelona’s payment of millions of dollars over several years to a company that belonged to the vice president of the refereeing committee in Spain.
Spanish soccer has been reeling since the story broken by radio station SER Catalunya earlier this week said Barcelona had paid 1.4 million euros ($1.5 million) from 2016–18 to a company belonging to former referee José María Enríquez Negreira, who was a part of the Spanish soccer federation’s refereeing committee from 1994–2018. Barcelona says the money was for technical reports on referees and youth players. Those payments, which have yet to be linked to any illegal or improper activity by the club, came to light as part of a tax probe into the company….