This article was first published on July 7 and was updated to reflect UEFA handing Osasuna a suspended one-year ban from its competitions and fining the La Liga side €100,000 (£86,000; $109,000) this week.
Osasuna had just enjoyed one of the best seasons in their history, reaching the Copa del Rey final (they lost 2-1 to Real Madrid), finishing seventh in La Liga and qualifying for Europe for the first time since 2006-07.
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After the final game on June 4, coach Jagoba Arrasate, his players and the club’s staff went off for well-deserved holidays, dreaming of a 2023-24 season that would include a Europa Conference League campaign. Just three days later, an email from UEFA arrived at the club offices in Pamplona. Suddenly, everyone at the club was facing a very different reality.
“We received an email telling us that, despite having administrative authorisation to play in European competition, there was an issue,” the club’s director general Fran Canal told The Athletic. “They told us that the documents we had provided certified that we had no problem with corruption or match-fixing. They understood, from the media, that there were court rulings which said the opposite. So there would have to be an investigation to show whether we were eligible or not.”
The email was a reference to the ‘Caso Osasuna’ — a match-fixing scandal dating from the end of the 2013-14 La Liga season. That led to the conviction in 2020 of several of the club’s former directors, including five-year prison sentences for ex-president Miguel Angel Archanco and former executive Angel Maria Vizcay. Seven other individuals were found guilty by the court, including two former Real Betis players, Antonio Amaya and Xabi Torres, who were ruled to have received €650,000 paid from Osasuna club funds.
All of which is very public knowledge in Spain — including at the Spanish football federation, who had certified Osasuna as eligible for qualification for European competition last season. Current Osasuna president Luis Sabalza and his regime have been very open about what happened — it was they who first reported to local police in early 2015 that money was missing from club funds.
So there was an expectation at Osasuna that they would be able to explain the details of their situation to UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Committee investigators Dimitris Davakis and Duygu Yasar and avoid any problems. That did not turn out to be the case.
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“It’s all done by email,” Canal said. “They asked us if we had been involved in match-fixing and we answered, obviously, that we had not. We tried to clarify and explain what had happened. It is obvious that we cannot be the guilty parties — we were the ones who notified the authorities that €2.3million was missing from club funds. They just responded with a proposal of the punishment.”
In late June, the case moved to UEFA’s appeals body, where Osasuna felt the wording of the relevant UEFA statute favoured their case, given that rulings made by the Spanish legal system can be taken into account by the committee’s three judges.
“We have various arguments,” Canal said. “First, the people who committed these irregularities were actually denounced by the current board. The club itself was never investigated, it was actually the victim of corruption. The Spanish courts in every moment said that Osasuna was not the guilty party, nor could be the guilty party. The ruling of the Spanish court, which we sent to the appeals committee, shows that the crime was committed by individuals for their own personal advantage, not to benefit the club.”
Nevertheless, the appeals body ruled in agreement with the inspectors that Osasuna were in breach of the regulations and recommended a one-year ban be served during the 2023-24 Europa Conference League. UEFA eventually concluded Osasuna should be able to participate in this season’s Conference League following proceedings at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) but, on Thursday, Europe’s governing body gave the La Liga side a suspended one-year ban from its competitions and fined them €100,000 for taking the organisation to court in Pamplona. Osasuna said they would not appeal the decision in a statement on Thursday.
Canal said he had no problem with the rules that were in place when the original one-year ban was recommended, but he disagreed with their interpretation by UEFA’s inspectors and judges.
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“We consider the rules correct,” he said. “We all have to do everything to root out corruption. But we do not agree that we have broken any rules. It is down to interpretation and UEFA only wanted to interpret it this way, they are not obliged to. The guilty party in a corruption case cannot be the one who first denounced it. Because if you do not protect the whistleblower, then you have a problem.”
Osasuna responded to that initial recommendation with a club statement saying the ruling was a “serious steamrolling of their rights” and confirming they would appeal to CAS.
“It is very hard to take, for the players, the club, the whole city,” Canal said. “They are taking away from us what we won on the pitch. We are going to keep trying to convince them and fight for what we have earned, the right to participate. That is why we have to appeal to CAS.”
Many in Pamplona were upset by what they saw as a contrast with how their relatively small club were left alone to fight their case. Barcelona received more institutional support in their battle to avoid any UEFA punishment for their alleged ‘Caso Negreira’ payments to the former vice-president of Spanish football’s refereeing committee.
There was also an angry Osasuna club statement denouncing leaks to Spanish newspapers which assured that they would be punished while Barca would not, in order “to build a story that sacrifices the weak to favour the strong”. Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales responded to that statement by calling it “fake news”.
“La Liga and the (Spanish) federation, we understand their point of view (is) that they have to take a neutral point of view,” Canal said. “Our disagreement with the federation was due to their talking publicly about the presumption of innocence for Barcelona, which they did not do in our case.”
Barca president Joan Laporta met with UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin last April and the Blaugrana chief afterwards said he had received assurances that his club would not be punished. Canal shook his head when asked if Osasuna’s less high-profile president Sabalza has also had such access. “No, we’ve not had that contact,” he said. “Barca will use what weapons they have to defend themselves. We have our own.”
Others who have been banned from UEFA competition for match-fixing since 2007 include Turkish clubs Fenerbahce and Besiktas and North Macedonian side Pobeda. All three failed in their appeals for CAS to overturn the bans.
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In 2020, Manchester City succeeded in overturning a two-year Champions League ban for non-compliance with financial fair play regulations. Canal said Osasuna would not follow the example set by City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who allegedly talked of “spending £30million on the 50 best lawyers” to take on UEFA at CAS.
“We won’t be paying the best 50 lawyers in the world, I can promise you that,” he said before Osasuna had appealed to CAS. “We will base our arguments on the ruling of the appeals committee, but we do not have that yet. We will go to CAS to defend what we really believe: which is that Osasuna deserves the right to play in the Conference League next year.
“For me, CAS has to be there as a refuge which gives legal guarantees so that the rules are followed and the law complied with — regardless of your size. That is a fundamental principle. If we do not believe in justice, we have a problem.”
The Conference League play-off draw takes place on August 7, with the first legs scheduled for August 24. Athletic Bilbao would have received a place in the competition had Osasuna’s appeal failed, having finished eighth in La Liga last year.
A missed European campaign would have cost Osasuna at least €10million in lost revenue between matchday income, prize money and sponsorship opportunities. On Thursday, UEFA confirmed Osasuna would be docked five per cent of their revenues from their participation in the competition. The previous uncertainty also presented a huge problem for their squad planning, as they did not know their 2023-24 salary and transfer budgets.
“There is institutional damage. Such scandals are obviously a big stain on our image, of incalculable value,” Canal said, before Osasuna found out they would be able to compete in Europe this season. “It would also mean a big financial loss. Then there is the squad planning for next season; we cannot finish that at the moment, not knowing whether we will be in Europe.”
The situation was particularly difficult for many at Osasuna to accept given the journey the club has been on since the events of 2014. Club president Sabalza had to mortgage his own home to pay the guarantee required to assume the role, while the team almost suffered relegation to the third tier before painstakingly working their way back in a gradual and sustainable way.
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Such progress on and off the pitch in recent years means Osasuna are widely seen as a model of good governance. Supporters who drifted away from the club when it was relegated and mired in scandal have returned in droves and there were many messages of support during last month’s San Fermin celebrations in Pamplona city centre.
💪🔴🔵 #Osasuna y la UEFA🇪🇺 presentes en la Plaza del Ayuntamiento de Pamplona! #Sanfermines2023
— Radio Marca Navarra (@radiomarcanav) July 6, 2023
It seemed as if a difficult and shameful past they thought had been put behind them had returned to hurt them again, but at least now they have certainty when it comes to playing in Europe.
“In the end, we just have to take this on, accept the situation we are in,” Canal said last month. “We are capable of defending ourselves, nobody need worry about that. We will do everything we can to defend this club to the death. Nobody can take away from us the taste of victory from reaching the Copa del Rey final and taking it to Real Madrid and then qualifying for Europe on the pitch.
“From there, well, we’ll see what God wants.”
(Top photo: Osasuna supporters watching the Copa del Rey in May; by Cesar Manso/AFP via Getty Images)
