Controversy involving Luis Rubiales in Spain, episode 253. According to the Iberian media The Objective, the former president of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) would have tried to help players to compensate for the drop in their salaries during the Covid-19 pandemic. And not just any stars, since they are the two former FC Barcelona stars Lionel Messi and Gerard Piqué. This investigation of The Objective is based on conversations from the phone of Luis Rubiales, who allegedly requested help from Aleksander Ceferin, the boss of UEFA.
The idea of all these people was to divert UEFA funds intended for the RFEF in order to pay them back to the two Barça players. The exchanges found on Luis Rubiales’ phone date back to April 2, 2020, when Gerard Piqué reportedly told him of his Argentine teammate’s concern about the significant pay cut requested by their club to deal with the health crisis.
“Even my dog wouldn’t learn it”
The former president of the Spanish federation would then have contacted Alexsander Ceferin immediately to suggest this solution, therefore having everything of an embezzlement, with the aim of keeping Lionel Messi in La Liga. Luis Rubiales would have asked Ceferin for discretion on this matter. What he would have obtained according to a message sent by the UEFA president. “Even my dog wouldn’t learn it,” he promised the former leader of Spanish football.
On April 6, 2020, after discussions with Messi and Piqué, Luis Rubiales would have sent a concrete proposal, namely recovering part of the broadcasting rights for UEFA matches to compensate for this drop in salary of the two players. Nevertheless The Objective does not indicate whether this illegal approach involving four major players in world football was finally successful. There is no doubt that we will not stop there, given the dimension that this affair risks taking in the coming days on the other side of the Pyrenees.