The echoes of the Negreira case, of course, were also very present in the assembly of Barça delegates this year. In his speech, the Barça president, Joan Laporta, once again recovered the concept he resorted to this week, that of “sociological Madridism”, as part of his defense and was especially belligerent..

«The history of Barça does not get dirty. I am referring to the most ferocious and reputational attack that we have received: the Negreira case. It is a smear campaign, we cannot allow it. No matter how much you search and slander, you will not find anything, because we have not done anything of what we are accused of.. There were some technical-arbitrial reports, with invoices and transfers. The judge's hypothesis is that this money was to buy referees, and we proved that it was for arbitration advice. Some of us are trying it and the others cannot do it,” said the Barcelona top leader.

«They don't want Barça to be more than a club. You have to go to Madrid a lot for work and that's how you realize that there is a sociological Madridism in all the centers of power: political, economic, media and sports.. In my first term I already fought against it and they didn't have a good time. Now, they attack us because they see that the president who made them suffer is once again in charge of the club.. They are not interested in talking about their power, which is permeated in all areas. They are the promoters of trying to control us, harm us and, if they can, destroy us. Sooner rather than later, everything will end with a sentence that will absolve Barça. I have bad news for sociological Real Madrid fans: we will repeat the best Barça in history,” Laporta harangued, pointing out the recovery of the entity under his command as the great trigger for the accusations.

«Together we have saved the club, despite the obstacles put in our wheels from outside.. They attack us because we are doing well again. Sportingly and economically. We are returning to sporting excellence. We have a young team, with many youth players, with much more value in the market and more sustainable than the one we inherited. And I don't just want to talk about football: last season we won all six leagues. It is unique. And the women's Champions League also deserves a separate chapter,” he explained.. «Economically, we are doing much better. We arrived when the 2020/21 season was ending and what we did was save the entity, which then had a debt of 1,350 million euros, most of it in the short term, with 455 million of negative net worth. We made brave decisions and saved the club. And without touching the partners' pockets. Today we present a profit of 304 million euros, higher than what we approved a year ago, with record figures in the commercial area,” he assured.

The delegates, in a fundamentally telematic assembly, with only the president, his board, the members of the commissions and the senators, that is, the oldest members, present in the room, approved with a large majority the numbers presented by the board, despite the fact that the number of participants, once again, was much lower than desirable in an event with such importance for the government of the entity. Thus, the approval of the settlement of the 2022-23 season, closed with profits of 304 million euros largely thanks to the application of the famous levers, took place with 376 votes in favor, 45 against and 20 blank. issued by the 462 delegates accredited at that time. The approval of the budget for the current year, which foresees income of 859 million euros and profits of around eight million, despite the fact that the first team must play in Montjuïc and largely also thanks to the containment of invested spending in sports salary mass, meanwhile, took place with 372 votes in favor, 37 against and 12 blank, counted out of a quorum, at the time of the vote, of 437 delegates.

When you hear or read “secret VAR room” in Las Rozas, one may think that in Ciudad de Fútbol there is a room that is accessed behind a fireplace by pushing the support of a poker like Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade. But the complementary Video Arbitration room, one of the seven that make up the system, has been there since 2018, the year this technology landed in the Spanish LaLiga. It is not a 'secret room' or invisible as some media outlets have reflected and the former referee, Xavier Estrada Fernández, has stated.

“This room was used by LaLiga in the first year of the VAR for television broadcast issues,” Carlos Clos Gómez, responsible for Video Arbitration in Spain and former soccer referee, explains to EL MUNDO.. After that 'secret' room was abandoned by LaLiga staff in 2019, the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) decided that the outgoing VAR judges of a match from Las Rozas would watch other matches with a “training” and “surveillance”.

This work was carried out by Clos Gómez himself in the first year of the VAR but, after a conversation with Carlos Velasco Carballo, former president of the CTA, the idea arose that this work would be distributed among the entire VAR group, among them, Xavier Estrada Fernandez.

The training objective of that room was to learn “how your partner is working, how he is acting and how he is communicating with the VOR,” according to Clos Gómez.. A task for which they intended to introduce the LaLiga F referees in November.

The surveillance focuses on two aspects: In “exceptional circumstances” of the matches, such as racist incidents or other serious events, which are communicated to those responsible for the CTA with Clos Gómez at the head. And in the ''technological and non-technical prescriptions'', which can be transmitted to the main room.

“The communications between that room and the VOR are absolutely nothing arbitral, they are simply technological,” explains Clos Gómez.. That is, the referees who watch the matches from this complementary room only notify their colleagues in the VOR room when the image of an offside, where the lines are shown for the audience to view, It has not been offered on the television broadcast.

Another function of the presence of these VAR referees in this complementary room is to serve as substitutes for the main ones in the event that any incident occurs, usually medical, that prevents them from continuing with their work.. Something, by the way, that has not happened in the five years that the VAR has been established in Spain.

IFAB rules

The presence of this room was not only known by LaLiga and the rest of the football players, but it has been the subject of multiple visits by them.. LaLiga sources assure that they knew of the existence of these rooms, but they do not know what happens there in its entirety.

There is some discrepancy about the possibility of communication between this room and the main VOR room.. Article 3 of the VAR protocol of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the organization that deals with the regulation of football, explains that “during the match, only authorized persons may enter the video room or communicate with the VAR , the AVAR or the repetition technician”.

It is not well established which body decides who are the “authorized persons” to do so.. According to Clos Gómez, this is because the regulations could not be so exhaustive in all sections or the rules would be incomprehensible and he assures that it refers mainly to technological aspects and not to the development of matches.

Likewise, the person in charge of the VAR in Spain urges anyone who questions the communications between rooms to report it to the competent courts since “everything” that happens in the VOR room of a match is recorded, both visually and visually. audio and it would be very easy to check if there has been any message that exceeds the functions of this 'secret room'.

Clos Gómez does not understand why Estrada Fernández has chosen this moment to sow doubt in the questioned arbitration group, especially affected by the Negreira case, taking into account that he spent a long time working in the VAR and did not make this complaint previously. “For me it has been a huge surprise,” says Clos Gómez.

Throughout the 17 classifications of 2023, Fernando Alonso had slipped, without exception and with astonishing regularity, into the top-10. A milestone not even within the reach of Max Verstappen or the Ferraris, always fearsome at a lap. However, the situation changed dramatically in Austin, where the Asturian was eliminated in Q1, so on Sunday he will start seventeenth on the grid.. Lance Stroll, penultimate, confirmed the terrible moment of Aston Martin, relegated precisely when it presented its brand new package of improvements.

No team can aspire to the podium at the Circuit of the Americas without aerodynamic efficiency, so the evolutions in the AMR-23 affected the diffuser, the sidepods, the flat bottom and the famous beam wing, a key piece for the performance of the rear wing.. You also don't get very far without a car that can handle the curves, which are very varied and demanding.. Fine-tuning the configuration on an asphalt at more than 42ºC, bumpy and prone to porpoising, was a challenge for the Silverstone team..

What no one expected in the green garage was that the brakes would ruin the option of examining his car during the only free session.. “We suffered a small overheating problem on the left front and had to put our cars in when we discovered a fire through the on-board cameras,” confirmed Mike Krack, team principal.. Alonso couldn't even test the soft compound during the morning and when he finally rode them, during Q1, his 1:36.8 left engineers and mechanics looking very bad..

Waiting for the miracle

They must have known something in there, because while the competition improved their records, the two-time champion couldn't even extract decent speed with his second set of soft tires (1:36.268). It is true that the deficit against Daniel Ricciardo, which marked the elimination, was only 55 thousandths. As true as that Alonso could only surpass Lance Stroll, his teammate, and the Williams of Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant.

The only message from Aston Martin's radio leaked by the FIA was a warning for the Asturian to remain in the car waiting for an infringement from a rival.. There was no miracle, of course, and the desolate scenes in the box did not need any emphasis either.. Even more concise was the communication between Alonso and his track engineer: “Sorry, friend, we're out,” to which the man from Oviedo replied with a simple “Received.”.

“It's very painful, but we will use this weekend as a test for next season,” commented the 14th in the COTA mixed zone, without excuses for his calamitous result.. “We didn't know how the car worked, because in the morning I was only able to complete six or seven laps with the new aero package.. So we came into qualifying blind,” he admitted.

And he would have had reasons to feel angry, since before his last attempt he was sent to the track too late.. A delay that already compromised the previous lap, where he could not warm up the tires in the best way. In fact, he crossed the finish line with just over a second to spare.. An accumulation of inconveniences that made the debacle inevitable. Since the 2022 Spanish GP, after a mix-up with the Alpine wall, Alonso has not crashed in Q1.

Verstappen pushes the limits

Now that two months have passed since that heroic podium in Zandvoort, where he performed well above the vehicle, Fernando's situation continues to blur in a bad way.. Since the holidays, his car has stalled in an alarming way. Not only has it lost track of Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren, but now it is surprised by Alpine, Alfa Romeo and Haas.

On this occasion, the power of the SF-23 was evident thanks to Charles Leclerc, who gave the Scuderia its fifth pole of the year (1:34.723), ahead of Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton. A year after leading the grid on this track, Carlos Sainz had to settle for fourth place, 22 hundredths behind the Monegasque.

The tension in Q3 increased when the stewards erased Verstappen's time for exceeding the white line at turn 19, which had allowed him to beat Leclerc by five thousandths.. On Sunday, the three-time champion will start sixth, in the wake of George Russell, although no one in their right mind should take away his status as the main candidate for victory.

Modest football is better understood in places like Mieres, birthplace of Caudal Deportivo, the Spanish club with the most Third Division titles.. Every weekend, five games are played on its two fields, both municipally owned.. Just over 400 fans attend the first team, today in Tercera RFEF.. And among the most veterans, stories still circulate about those times when the footballers themselves, before the initial whistle, attached a roller to one of their cars to clean the playing field.. They were years of blood on the shin guards, balls like stones and boots oozing mud.

Today, however, in the field Eliseo Gutiérrez only smells of rubber. That of the artificial grass released in March 2021, for which the City Council paid 190,000 euros to Limonta Sport. “That investment exceeded our annual budget,” clarifies Óscar Sánchez, director of the Asturian club.. Today, only 30 months later, the future plans of Caudal Deportivo come up against Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2055, published on September 27 in the official journal of the European Union. A text that requires replacing, in the next eight years, the rubber filling of its synthetic grass. A real threat to Mieres and the more than 12,000 artificial grass installations in Spanish football.

«Here we have also just renewed our fields, so we are on tenterhooks. Let's see if they give us help, because the change seems very drastic and our budgets are very tight,” begins Tomás Martín, head of Sports at the Teruel City Council, in reference to the works at the Los Planos Sports City, inaugurated in December 2022. and in the Campo Luis Milla, released in 2019.

«The rolling is not the same»

«We agree with the idea of minimizing health risks, but the truth is that the alternatives that we use today do not offer the same result. I have examined several studies and the rolling of the ball is not the same,” adds Martín, in reference to cork, olive pits or coconut shells, the alleged future substitutes for rubber.. “The new materials have a very high cost,” concludes the municipal technician, without certainty even regarding the Brussels deadlines: “They say they expire in 2031, but I don't know if there will finally be moratoriums.”

What is, therefore, that cost that is so feared in Teruel and that the rest of the clubs and municipal corporations will have to face? The most accurate calculation is offered by Rubén Martín from RealTurf, the only Spanish company dedicated to artificial grass recommended by FIFA. «The average budget to renovate a playing field is around 200,000 euros. However, the change to cork will mean an increase in price of around 10%,” says Martín, technical advisor to the football department of the Valencian firm.

Since last Sunday, when inaccurate and alarmist information spread, Martín's phone has not stopped ringing.. However, his predictions for the coming years sound reassuring: «From now until 2031, artificial grass will be able to continue being installed completely normally.. And in 2040 I am sure that it will still be played on rubber.

REALTURF

The aforementioned EU regulation that prohibits the manufacture and marketing of microplastics has been on the table of the Ministry of the Environment for two years.. However, the majority of clubs have lived oblivious to a reality that, even though it was known, they did not feel was a priority.. This is the case of Betis San Isidro, in the Madrid neighborhood of Carabanchel, which built its Old Dog Track field four years ago.

“We feel very lucky with this state-of-the-art grass, because the previous one was a disaster,” says Pablo García Rojo, green and white manager.. In any case, to clear up any doubts that might lurk, the manager planned to meet yesterday with Carlos Izquierdo, district councilor. “We depend completely on the City Council, even in simple maintenance tasks,” he admits.

Because synthetic grass, in theory, must be preserved by stretching the fiber, distributing the fillers and removing the famous rubber balls so that they do not pile up and cause injuries.. To do this, also on paper, brushes from very specialized machinery must be used.. However, day-to-day life is much more prosaic even in the FIFA Quality Pro facilities, the most prestigious seal.

Sometimes, regulations collide with the logic and reality of management

Bernardo Varela, deputy mayor of Allariz.

Today, only five courses have this approval in all of Spain.. And one of them is in Allariz. «We are an enclave of the Biosphere Reserve, with an environmental sensitivity beyond doubt, but sometimes the regulations clash with the logic and reality of the management of a town of 6,500 inhabitants, with 92 population centers, where in some “There are more streetlights than inhabitants,” emphasizes Bernardo Varela, deputy mayor in the Orense municipality.. In his opinion, Allariz's annual budget, below six million euros per year, could not withstand another shake-up due to the EU.. “We were not aware of any changes at the European level, but for a small council like ours it would mean an economic setback,” Varela concludes.

Another FIFA Quality Pro field is located in Martorell, where Eric García would begin his training before signing for Barça. «We have changed the oldest synthetic grass and installed another state-of-the-art. The Torrent de Llops Sports Complex is a relatively important facility, the most advanced in our area”, explains Rafael García, president of CF Martorell, which today competes in Group 3 of the Primera Catalana. This maximum approval, as confirmed by the Teruel City Council, is renewed annually, although the relevant fee was not paid to FIFA from the Mudejar capital.. “Here it made no sense to maintain what only serves as a symbol of excellence for a club, but not for a City Council,” reveals Martín.

«Sell your waste, very cheap»

The concerns of humble football, far beyond a seal, focus on the life cycle of grass, since its deadlines clash with those of the European Union. And while Brussels estimates a period that ranges between six and eight years, the clubs have already become accustomed to extending it to almost 15. “There is a lot of discussion about what a neighborhood soccer field needs versus a much more professional one, so there are alternatives for all types of levels,” says Dolores Romano, chemical substances policy manager at the European Environment Office. (EEB, for its acronym in English).

After numerous meetings with experts from FIFA and UEFA, the EEB official has had several dossiers on the table. “The one who protested the most was the tire recycling industry, because it was very cheap for them to crush and sell their waste to form the happy layer of rubber,” reveals Romano.. “These companies proposed that the fields be allowed to continue using and that an emissions limit simply be set.”. That is, no player could go off the pitch with the same clothes or boots to avoid contagion.. Of course, this was impossible in a neighborhood venue. It was completely unrealistic, due to the economic cost of maintaining the filtering systems and building retaining walls,” Romano emphasizes, recalling that there are already European cities, such as Hamburg, where microplastics from tires have already been definitively removed. .

As an epilogue to this journey, it is worth returning to Mieres and heeding the warnings of its directive. «To avoid knee injuries, our first team always wants to train on the new field, although I think these facilities should have much more maintenance,. They should come with a machine to repair what has come off and renew the rubber. Since the City Council cannot, we only have our work as volunteers, including that of the directors. Here, whoever shows up lends a hand,” confesses Sánchez. His last message of help perfectly summarizes the anxieties of Caudal Deportivo. “The field turned out very well, but without TV income we need extra help to maintain decent conditions.” .