San Jose Costa Rica
The goalkeeper Keylor Navas (PSG, France) He lost a defamation lawsuit he had filed against two former Costa Rican soccer leaders, although he will receive about $ 5,000 in civil damages, a San Jose court ruled this Friday.
Navas, along with Bryan Ruiz (Alajuelense) and Celso Borges (Deportivo La Coruña), had sued managers Adrián Gutiérrez and Juan Carlos Román for saying in an interview that the players were in danger of losing games to fire the then-Tico coach. Colombian Jorge Luis Pinto in 2014.
The alleged threat was alleged to have taken place in a meeting of which “there are no minutes, it was not broadcast, only the footballers and managers were present,” the court ruled, according to La Nación newspaper published on its website.
Navas’s claim is based on an interview Gutiérrez granted in 2018, in which he talked about the players’ alleged intentions on their return from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, against their coach.
According to La Nación, the court held that the leaders had made a “prohibition error,” that is, they were acting under the assumption that the comments they made were not illegal.
Navas and his colleagues, admitting to disagreeing with Pinto on the grounds of an apparently excessive harshness, denied having conspired against him.
The leaders’ claims were confirmed at trial by former Costa Rica football president Eduardo Li, who mentioned an alleged clause in the contract that could allow Pinto to be fired if he lost three consecutive games.
Li went on to say that Navas and his colleagues were in danger of losing all three games.
For its part, the Colombian DT, who testified on the internet as a witness at the trial, said Li had warned him of the players’ intentions. But according to the portal crhoy.com, he denied signing a contract with that clause.
In the end, the court agreed to the original contract and did not find what Li claimed.
“What Li denies is the existence of the clause and no such clause existed in the contract,” the court said, which recommended prosecuting him for “lying under oath”.
The former Costa Rican football boss was already involved in a corruption scandal that hit FIFA, and in 2017 he was disqualified for life from holding positions in the institution.
Despite the loss of the trial, the court advised that Navas and his colleagues would each receive the equivalent of $ 5,000 in civil damages, far less than the nearly 60,000 they had initially filed for.