Osasuna has responded through a statement to the recommendation of the UEFA inspectors not to admit the registration of the club in the Conference League 23-24. The club does not share the criteria of UEFA, appeals to the Appeals Committee and announces that it will fight legally, until the last consequences, to defend its rights.
Strong with the weak and weak with the strong, the UEFA judiciary has not wanted to take into account that it was the Spanish courts themselves who have declared, literally, that Osasuna has been the victim of the diversion of money carried out by some of its former directors behind the back of the highest governing body of the entity, the Assembly, and the control mechanisms of the club itself.
With this decision, UEFA intends to punish Osasuna again in the figure of its current managers, who are precisely the ones who filed a complaint in court, beginning the legal procedure to recover the money illegally stolen from the entity’s accounts and restore its good standing. name. Perhaps we are facing the only known case in the recent history of European football in which a club prosecutes some of its former managers, who are currently awaiting imprisonment. It is also necessary to remember that that season Osasuna was relegated to the Second Division and that, later, it was about to drop one more category. The club had to part with all its assets to pay off part of its debts while the new managers mortgaged their homes, their funds and their pension plans to be able to redirect the course of the entity. It is to those people, to a club that today its accusers will not resist in an exemplary test; and to a hobby that lived with anguish the almost disappearance of their team, who today are punished.
In Osasuna’s opinion, the message that UEFA transmits is, without a doubt, counterproductive for football and for those entities that, faced with the risk of being sportingly sanctioned by the highest body of European football, choose now not to attack corruption in the world of football head-on. Osasuna understands that this cannot and should not be the goal pursued by UEFA.
The UEFA investigation once again puts the focus on Osasuna and on some managers who, since their arrival in 2014, have been rebuilding with cleanliness and honesty an entity that left their previous managers in the most absolute ruin. For those who do not know the case in depth, and are not able to separate the events that occurred in the 2013-2014 season from what is currently happening, the damage to the entity’s image is very serious.
A damage that has also occurred with the silence of the main Spanish football organizations, including the RFEF. During the last weeks we have witnessed continuous leaks interested in, in a national key, to certain media and journalists to build a story that sacrificed the weak to favor the strong. Leaks that already on the 7th, the day Osasuna learned of the start of the investigation, categorically assured that the end of this entire process was going to be the expulsion of the rojillo club from European competitions. And with that horizon, knowing that the leaks did not come from sources far from the organizations that must ensure the neutrality of the process, Osasuna has worked since then.
We are prepared for the worst, but we must not abandon the motto that has accompanied us in the reconstruction of the club for the last nine years: Osasuna never gives up. We will defend our rights and those of our fans with the same zeal with which they cheer us on every weekend., with the same effort with which our players and coaching staff have deservedly earned their place in the next edition of the Conference League. We believe so much in what we do, and in how we do it, that we cannot allow Club Atlético Osasuna to be used, with the acquiescence of those who in 2014 looked the other way, to solve the problems of others.
Strong response from the RFEF
The Federation, for its part, has confirmed Osasuna’s statement with another letter in which it describes it as “infamy, lack of respect and a very serious act.”
Given the statement that CA Osasuna has just published in relation to the proposal prepared by the UEFA inspectors that is submitted to the Appeals Committee to adopt the appropriate measures by law, this RFEF wants to communicate that it is an infamy, an offense of respect and a very serious action that the club intends to implicate the RFEF in this matter, curiously leaving aside, always subtly, the origin of the complaints, and it is extremely serious to want to make its dignified and magnificent fans believe that the RFEF has not supported or does not support his club, referring in that accusatory vision solely and exclusively to the RFEF and ignoring, as always, other entities, institutions and representatives of institutions that in the past advised on precisely this issue to the accused managers and the club itself, assuring them that it would never be sanctioned.
The statement also intentionally ignores that the RFEF did not act at any time in this procedure as a private prosecution because it understood and defended at all times the need to preserve the innocence of the club and did not follow the strategy of denouncing other institutions that are now intentionally denounced. authors of the statement do not mention them.
We are used to this type of actions by people who act at the dictates of their superiors. The RFEF acted, has acted and will continue to act defending the interests of the club and the fans at all times and has supported CA Osasuna’s thesis, as it can unquestionably prove when appropriate and, when it does, it hopes that the authors of this statement and its instigators publicly apologize to the RFEF.
