Due to his status as a Catalan referee, José María Enríquez Negreira (Barcelona, ??1945) never refereed Barcelona during the 13 seasons he directed matches in the First Division. And when he had to take charge of the 36 games that Real Madrid called, misgivings surfaced in the capital. “People who think I can’t do it because I’m Catalan are not normal people,” Negreira pointed out. At that time the referees spoke before and after the games.
When he retired in 1992, he became a regular spectator at Barcelona matches from the last seats in the presidential box. He was already part of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) as vice-president, a position he reached in 1994. He became the right-hand man of the Committee’s president, Victoriano Sánchez Arminio, and his duties were based on preparing the reports of the First Division referees and Second division. He held that position until 2018.
They were more than 25 years in which he was barely heard, although he did enjoy a luxurious life. He drove a Mercedes, perfumed himself with high-end Swiss fragrance Davidoff, dressed in shirts with the initials J.E. and drank the highest billed Chivas Scotch whiskey. In 1995, a year after joining the CTA, he created the company Dasnil 95, whose corporate purpose was “advertising services for companies, text printing, gift items and making sports videos”. In recent years it was his son, Javier Enríquez Romero, who regularly visited the Camp Nou, the Miniestadi and later the Estadi Johan Cruyff. His father made him an administrator of Dasnil 95 in 2002. He was 22 years old.
“He liked being called Javi. Not Xavier. He came to the field to watch the games, he was interested in the players and with some he did coaching sessions, ”says a club worker at the time. This is confirmed by the description that Enríquez Romero has on his website, all written in the third person. “When an athlete has called him or met him, he is already available to him, forever,” he recounts. “Not only did he make this type of arbitration reports, he also advised us on other matters, he was a very good professional,” ex-president Bartomeu highlighted in the Friday edition of this newspaper. The refereeing reports of the subsidiary that he presented to the sports management led by Pep Segura were transferred to the delegate Toni Alonso. “He recommended to the players if they had to be more or less careful and review the card history,” add the same sources.
When Enríquez Jr. joined his father’s company, he was studying Administration and Management of Technology Companies, a course that he decided to take after passing through grassroots football at Espanyol and Barcelona. He also played for Sabadell, Sant Andreu, Hospitalet and Valencia CF. He gave up his football career when he realized that he could not reach the elite. “He didn’t want to waste time”, reveals Javier himself in the description of his abilities.
When he arrived at the Valencia subsidiary, he had already created an audiovisual production company dedicated to arbitration analysis. Later, at the Mestalla club, he began his career as a technical assistant. And he met Luis Aragonés, with whom he reached the Spanish team. He was in the staff that won Euro 2008 and played in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Later he followed Aragonés when he signed for Fenerbahçe.
His relationship with the Federation was almost permanent. He worked as an analyst for the Technical Committee of Referees from 1993 to 2009. Until 2015 he also served as a confidant for the Primera referees while working in parallel for Barcelona. “He took advantage of his father’s status. He called the referees who went up to First and Second and offered to be his coach. The referees told him yes. Nobody wanted to be frowned upon by the vice president,” referee sources told this newspaper.
In 2018, Barcelona paid the last invoice to Dasnil 95. The interruption of the relationship coincided with the departure of Enríquez Negreira father from the Committee. The sports director Pep Segura and the general manager Òscar Grau decided to reduce expenses. Enríquez Jr.’s curriculum also includes the course ‘Barça DNA Methodology’ taught by Joan Vilà and Paco Seirul lo.
