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Real Madrid have formally asked UEFA to "strip Barcelona of their titles" earned between 2001 and 2018 as a consequence of sporting corruption allegations.
The news follows Florentino Pérez's successful re-election as Real Madrid president on Sunday, defeating rival candidate Enrique Riquelme by a 65-35 margin in the club membership vote.
Pérez called the elections earlier than expected last month, simultaneously unveiling his intention to submit a dossier to UEFA outlining what he described as the "biggest corruption case ever" in relation to the Negreira affair—an ongoing probe into payments made by Barcelona to a former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees.
"The systemic corruption of the Negreira case … How can we simply ignore it?" Pérez stated at his press conference on May 12. "We're putting together a 500-page dossier that I'll deliver to UEFA once the season concludes. I've already been in contact with them. There's no precedent for this in the history of world football. It's the biggest corruption case ever."
Following his re-election victory in Sunday's membership vote, Pérez is pressing ahead with the Negreira case, with AS reporting that he has now formally submitted his report to UEFA while pushing for severe penalties against his fiercest rivals.
AS's report states that Madrid are "not only requesting a sanction against Barcelona that would bar them from participating in European competitions. It goes further. Real Madrid seeks to have the titles won by the Catalan club during those years erased from their official record, so that the Blaugrana cannot boast about them."
What Is the Negreira Case?
The scandal, which first emerged in 2023, revolves around €8.4 million ($9.9 million) in payments made by Barcelona to companies connected to José María Enríquez Negreira, a former La Liga referee and ex-vice-president of Spain's Technical Committee of Referees (CTA).
These payments were made across a 17-year span from 2001 to 2018. Although public official bribery charges were dropped in 2024 on the grounds that Negreira did not qualify as a public official, the investigation pressed on under the framework of sports corruption.
Barcelona have consistently denied that the payments had anything to do with alleged referee-buying, insisting that Negreira was engaged as a 'consultant' who provided scouting reports on youth players from opposing clubs and analysis related to professional refereeing.
In December 2025, it was reported that Real Madrid had initiated legal proceedings in hopes of securing "millions in damages" over the unresolved matter. After Pérez raised the issue publicly again during his May press conference, Barcelona stated they were "carefully examining" the claims made by the Real Madrid president and threatened to pursue their own legal action.
Could Barcelona Be Stripped of Titles?
What unfolds next remains uncertain.
UEFA has not definitively closed the matter and is reportedly willing to take action once it has thoroughly reviewed all available evidence.
In 2023, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin described the case as: "In my opinion, one of the most serious I've ever seen in football."
Catalan outlet SPORT reports that Real Madrid is ready to "go all the way" and is escalating the matter to the European level, with UEFA having the authority to impose sanctions on Barcelona if they are found guilty of misconduct.
However, while UEFA could theoretically strip Barcelona of the four Champions League titles won between 2001 and 2018, it holds no jurisdiction over La Liga.
Any title removal would also establish a significant precedent for UEFA. European football's governing body has never stripped a club of a title after they have won the final.
Marseille claimed the 1993 Champions League before becoming entangled in a match-fixing scandal. They were stripped of their French league title and barred from defending their European crown, yet UEFA did not revoke their 1993 Champions League title since the proven match-fixing involved a domestic league fixture, not a European competition.
Similarly, Juventus were stripped of their 2004–05 and 2005–06 Serie A titles due to the Calciopoli scandal, but their UEFA competition results during that period remained unaffected.