La Liga
LaLiga in the bag, but Barcelona still face huge problems
Barcelona may have won the LaLiga title on Sunday, 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 euros ($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.
FINANCIAL HEADACHES
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-euro renovation project.
Restricted by LaLiga’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 LaLiga, Barca are still about 200 million euros over the cap and remain unable to register new contracts signed months ago with defender Ronald Araujo and midfielder Gavi, key players whose future is in doubt unless the club finds a way to fit them into its budget.
Crashing out of European competition early this season dealt another blow to the club’s finances, which are so fragile the board has pulled several levers including selling stakes in its TV rights and media divisions to try to balance the books.
The club will also leave its iconic but outdated Camp Nou stadium for the next few seasons as it starts its hugely expensive renovation project.
In this season’s budget, Barcelona’s board boldly predicted that the team would reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League, and bring in plenty of related income.
Instead, they crashed out at the group stage of Europe’s top club competition and were then knocked out of the Europa League by Manchester United.
That piled the pressure on coach Xavi Hernández to win the league – another budget prediction – as Barca’s last way to limit the damage to their 2022-23 income.
While the fans will rightly celebrate Barcelona’s romp to the LaLiga title with four games to spare, inside the club’s high offices there is still plenty to worry about.
-Reuters
Barcelona said their request for a permit to return to the Camp Nou for Sunday’s LaLiga match against Real Sociedad has been denied, with the city council highlighting safety and security issues with the revamped venue.
Barca had been hoping to return to a reduced-capacity Camp Nou with 27,000 spectators but have failed to obtain the necessary permits from Barcelona City Council.
Barca will instead host the match at the Lluis Companys Olympic Stadium in Montjuic, where they played during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons with renovations at Camp Nou now nine months behind schedule.
“We have spotted different elements that need to be fixed and have an impact in the safety and security of the stadium,” chief of civil protection Sebastia Massague said at a city council meeting.
Barca had to begin their LaLiga home campaign at the Estadi Johan Cruyff in their own training complex, where only 6,000 fans attended their match against Valencia on September 14, after a Post Malone concert left the Lluis Companys pitch in poor condition.
“The club is currently working on the new amendments that the council has shared today,” Barca said in a statement.
On Friday, the Catalan club also announced that their Champions League group stage match against Paris St Germain on October 1 would also take place at the Lluis Companys.
Barca are second in LaLiga, trailing leaders Real Madrid by five points but having played a game fewer.
-Reuters
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Villarreal midfielder Thomas Partey on Wednesday appeared in a London court and pleaded not guilty to charges of rape and sexual assault involving three women.
Partey, a Ghana international, is accused of five counts of rape relating to two women, plus a charge of sexual assault against a third woman, between April 2021 and June 2022.
The alleged offences took place when Partey played for Premier League soccer club Arsenal. He left the club this summer and signed for Spain’s Villarreal.
The 32-year-old appeared in the dock at Southwark Crown Court and spoke only to confirm his name and date of birth and enter his not guilty pleas.
Partey was released on bail ahead of his trial, which was listed for Nov. 2, 2026 and is due to take between six and eight weeks.
He was signed by Arsenal from Atletico Madrid for 50 million euros ($59.2 million) in 2020 and became a key member of the English side’s first team, before his contract expired at the end of June.
Partey played for Villarreal in their Champions League game against Arsenal’s bitter rivals Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday night.
He came on as a second-half substitute and was booed loudly by the Spurs fans every time he touched the ball.
-Reuters
Villarreal and Ghana midfielder Thomas Partey, who has been charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, walks outside Southwark Crown Court, in London, Britain, September 17, 2025. REUTERS/Maja Smiejkowska
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Real Madrid on Tuesday denounced plans to stage a LaLiga match between Barcelona and Villarreal in Miami, warning the proposal could undermine football’s competitive balance and vowing to petition global governing bodies to block the move.
The Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) on Monday approved the December 20 fixture at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, which could become the first LaLiga match held abroad and the first European league fixture staged in the United States.
“Real Madrid wish to express to its members, supporters and football fans in general its firm rejection of the proposal,” the club said in a statement, revealing they have already urged FIFA, UEFA and Spain’s Higher Sports Council (CSD) to intervene.
The club accused the RFEF of making its decision “without informing or consulting the clubs participating in the competition” and argued that staging the match in Miami “violates the essential principle of territorial reciprocity” in home-and-away league formats.
Real further stated that the move would “alter the competitive balance” and grant “an unfair sporting advantage” to the clubs involved.
The club also warned that approving the proposal could compromise sporting integrity and “set an unacceptable precedent,” insisting any change of this nature should require “the express and unanimous agreement of all the clubs participating in the competition”.
The plan still requires approval from UEFA, US Soccer, CONCACAF and ultimately FIFA before LaLiga President Javier Tebas can realise his long-held ambition of taking Spanish football to the U.S.
-Reuters
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