BarcelonaThe National Court has accepted the lawsuit filed by former international referee Xavi Estrada Fernández against the former leadership of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and the leaders of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA). It denounces an alleged improper use of private funds and points to Luis Rubiales (former president of the RFEF), Andreu Camps (former general secretary of the RFEF), Carlos Velasco Carballo (former CTA president) and Luis Medina Cantalejo (current CTA president).
The case dates back to 2018. On August 9 of that year, the RFEF and La Liga reached an agreement for the remuneration of professional referees between the 2018/19 and 2022/23 seasons. An economic item of 13,947,935 euros that was allocated entirely to referees, assistants, fourth referees and reporters.
It was also determined that the VAR referee in the First Division would receive 2,000 euros per match and the VAR assistant would receive 850. Slightly lower amounts in the Second Division (900 and 400, respectively). Adding the costs of maintenance and per diems, the costs of the video refereeing would be 2,106,849 euros, an amount that would be progressively increased each season.
In this transversal agreement, 615,000 euros were also allocated to refereeing courses, 150,000 euros for possible CTA contingencies and 100,000 euros for the VAR support structure, which includes tasks such as monitoring matches, editing and drafting of video clips or the preparation of statistics.
The numbers were protected by a confidentiality agreement that expired once the agreement ended, which was signed by Luis Rubiales, Andreu Camps and Velasco Carballo on behalf of the RFEF and by Javier Tebas and Javier Gómez on behalf of La Liga, as president and corporate general manager of the employer.
The complaint of Estrada Fernández
After retiring from the field of play, the former Catalan player Xavi Estrada Fernandez entered the specific body of VAR referees in the 21/22 season. Carlos Velasco Carballo then informed them that their salary would be reduced considerably and they would start receiving around 7,000 gross euros per month, regardless of the matches they were assigned to in the Sala VOR. The conditions that had been signed were 50,000 fixed annual euros plus 2,000 euros per match. However, the confidentiality of the agreement meant that the arbitrators themselves did not know what their salary was.
Estrada was a VAR referee for 2 seasons and, once retired, he became aware of the agreement and reported to the Superior Sports Council (CSD) that there are 1,921,280 euros that have not been allocated to the referees as required the agreement between the RFEF and La Liga. An offense classified as very serious according to the sports law and the royal decree.
Once the complaint is accepted, the next step is to carry out all the relevant expert tests and audits to find out if the Federation and the CTA have really breached the agreement and, if so, to find out where the almost 2 million of euros that are missing from the game of the VAR referees.
On the other hand, it is not known whether the rest of the allocation planned for referees, assistants and reporters has been managed correctly, because there is no field referee who has reported the situation. Therefore, no investigation will be conducted in this regard. For now, at least.
