Research status and open questions

What this page is

A record that only publishes what it found is not auditable. This page publishes what it did not: the periods no phase of the research covered, the documents that were sought and not obtained, the records that could not be published at all, and the points where the research process itself failed.

The governing principle is that absence is data. “Not found” does not mean “does not exist”, and a null result is recorded as a result rather than as silence. In at least one case a null actively supports a finding: no primary record naming Messi in a Spain squad was located anywhere, and that absence is part of why the eligibility question resolves as it does.

This is distinct from the correction register, which records what the project got wrong and fixed. What it never established at all is here.

Date ranges nobody covered

The research was divided into phases by period and subject. These ranges fell between those divisions and were assigned to nobody. Most were identified before any research began — four were flagged at that point, assigned to no phase, and are still open today.

ID	Range	Subject	Status
U-1	~Aug 2021 – Jun 2023	The PSG spell; the 2021 Barcelona registration failure and departure; the 2023 destination decisionGAP-1 — “highest-priority gap”	Still uncovered. A new PSG research phase was recommended and never created. This was the highest-priority gap identified before any research ran, and it remained open through seven phases.
U-2	Sept 2016 – Jun 2018	Argentina national-team competitive matches, including the 2018 qualifying campaign and any disciplinary mattersGAP-2 (partial)	Still uncovered. The owning phase reaches only to April 2017 and only institutionally. A single match entry exists in the whole window.
U-3	Jan 2023 – Jul 2026	Argentina national team, including Copa América 2024GAP-3	Still uncovered. Copa América 2024 appears in no phase of the research. A dedicated phase was recommended and never created.
U-4	2016 – 2026	Award and voting controversiesGAP-5	Still uncovered. A dedicated phase was recommended and never created. The ambiguity was flagged rather than absorbed into another phase’s scope.
U-5	~2005 – 2021	Club sporting career; the La Liga match-incident ledgerGAP-8	Still uncovered, and this is the gap that costs the most. In the research record’s own words: the project has no La Liga club-match incident ledger, so the match-manipulation question has no match-level dataset to be tested against within the project. The Negreira matter is fundamentally about La Liga refereeing, and the project cannot test it.
U-6	2019 Copa América (partial)	The medal-ceremony refusal; the “arranged for Brazil” allegation in full; comparison with disciplinary precedents; statements by AFA, Brazil and CONMEBOLNot in the original coverage map	Partially uncovered. The semi-final incidents and both sanctions are documented. The medal refusal, the precedent comparison and the association statements are not documented in any available entry.

The full coverage map, period by period, is published at the master coverage map.

Where the record is thin

These sections were covered, but not to the standard the rest of the record meets. The shortfall is separated from its reason, because they are different things.

Financial flows, and the AFA / TourProdEnter matter

Substantially complete, with the AFA arm reported rather than adjudicated

A reporting reconstruction exists. The underlying bank records and the official U.S. proceeding records do not — no public U.S. docket or charge was located, and the specific flow figures remain largely traceable to a single originating outlet.

Argentina national team to 2015, and officiating

Partial

Around 39 official match reports were never systematically retrieved, and several matches are recorded as not audited to completion. Part not attempted, part source unavailable.

Award and voting controversies

Thin, and split across an unowned gap

2010–2015 is an explicit null. 2016–2026 has no owner at all — see U-4 above.

Tournament officiating, 2018–2022

Substantially complete, but internally contradicted

Three incompatible card ledgers exist for the same fixtures. The site renders the conflict rather than merging them into one ledger. Some official crew and VAR details remain incomplete.

2016 retirement and return

Complete — the thinness is itself the finding

One confirmatory check on a governing body’s 2016 press archive was not attempted, budget having been exhausted. It was the final step in establishing a null result, and the null stands without it.

Records omitted from publication

4 numbered research entries are not published anywhere on this site. They are listed here because a record that quietly drops entries is indistinguishable from a record that never had them.

These four are part of the 23 entries whose original research dossier is missing from the corpus — the checksum-audit gap set out on the methodology page. 19 of those 23 could be published as reconstructed partial records. These four could not, for one specific reason: no date survives for them anywhere in the surviving material.

The timeline is ordered by date, and a record cannot enter it without one. Assigning an approximate date would have meant inventing a fact in order to publish a record about facts, so they are held out and disclosed instead. What does survive about each is below — it is the evidence that these are documented omissions rather than entries that never existed.

ORIGIN-003Grandoli and Salvador Aparicio
What survives
Classified a disputed interpretation resting on participant testimony. The correction table notes that the "first club" account and the grandmother anecdote rest on family and coach recollection, and records the entry's lock status as provisional.
Reason for omission
No date survives in any available material.
ORIGIN-008The intermediary chain
What survives
Classified a confirmed fact on participant testimony, with the independence audit finding n=2 and flagging the two sources as NOT mutually independent: Gaggioli and Minguella are co-participants in the same event, so they corroborate each other without being independent of each other. Minguella's memoir text was never retrieved.
Reason for omission
No date survives in any available material.
ORIGIN-015La Masia progression
What survives
Classified a confirmed fact on retrospective sourcing, with the cadete treble and the "partido de la máscara" corroborated. Lock status: locked.
Reason for omission
No date survives in any available material.
ORIGIN-027The Lacueva personal-payment claim
What survives
Recorded as not independently verified — single-source.
Reason for omission
No date survives in any available material.

Documents the research could not obtain

Categorised by why each is missing, because that determines whether it is recoverable.

Inaccessible — located, but not retrievable

The document is known to exist and was identified, but sits behind a court registry, a paywall, judicial secrecy or a robots exclusion. Recoverable in principle.

The full text of the founding prosecutorial complaint of 10 March 2023 — fragments only.
The full tax-authority report, held in the case file and partly under judicial secrecy. The research record calls this its most load-bearing negative.
The complete investigating-force reports, leaked only in part — these hold the year-by-year payment table.
The itemised payment spreadsheet behind the 2006–2011 payment years, paywalled.
The beneficial-ownership record for TOURPRODENTER LLC. The public entity record was retrieved, but it lists a registered agent and a manager, which is not proof of beneficial ownership.
The forensic medical report on Negreira’s condition — not public.
Full contractual terms for several commercial agreements — confidential between private parties.

Not found — searched for, nothing located

A search was run and returned nothing. This is a result. It is recorded as a null rather than as an absence of effort, and in at least one case the null actively supports a finding.

The full text of a governing body’s August 2024 qualification page — described in the research record as the single most important unresolved document in the project, capable of closing the Club World Cup host-berth question either way.
Official match reports for all ~39 Argentina matches to 2015, with officials, cards and appointing body.
Any primary document linking a named official to a specific appointment or decision.
Any primary record naming Messi in a Spain squad — a null that supports the finding rather than weakening it.
The clinical record establishing the treatment end date.
Two named refereeing or laws experts for every disputed penalty: not located at adequate source quality for three of the matches.
An authoritative statistical compendium on the five-penalty question — which is why this site states the penalty count but not the historical superlative.

Never in the project

Material the research was built on, or expected to be built on, that is not among the files at all.

The original brief, verbatim. The research record’s section structure is a reconstruction of it, and that reconstruction’s fidelity is explicitly unverifiable.
Permanent entry identifiers for one phase: that phase assigned none. Cross-references to its material are therefore descriptive rather than ID-linked, and no identifiers have been invented to fill the gap.
Primary documentation of one reported intermediary role — the assertions remain traceable to a single originating outlet.

How the research went wrong

Distinct from what the research failed to find. A reader assessing this record is entitled to know how it was assembled, not only what it contains.

The initial document audit returned a null result while the documents existed. The files were present and readable; the audit reported none.
Five different classification vocabularies were in use across eight phases. A notification that the governing vocabulary had changed was to reach six later phases; it reached two, and explicitly did not reach three. One phase never adopted any of the project’s vocabularies at all. The reconciliation is published in full on the methodology page.
Four coverage gaps were flagged before any research ran and assigned to nobody. All four are still open.
One phase’s corrections addendum breached the project’s own rule against Wikipedia: eleven of its twelve listed sources are Wikipedia. That addendum’s material is treated accordingly.
One confirmatory archive check was not attempted because the budget was exhausted.

What was asked for and not delivered

Audited against the project handoff, because the original brief was never located — which is itself the first omission on the list.

The original brief’s section structure. Not delivered, because the brief itself was never located.
A recommended episode structure, and an episode bibliography. Neither was produced.
A complete master timeline: the timeline has six holes, four of which were flagged before any research ran and assigned to nobody.
Referee opinions at adequate source quality for three of the disputed matches — recorded as not found rather than filled with weaker sourcing.

What would move this record furthest

Ordered by what each would unblock, not by how difficult it is. Two are time-critical: they resolve on their own schedule, and the record has to follow.

ID	Scope	What it would unblock	Priority
P-2	Recovery of the original brief	Whether this record’s own section structure is faithful to what was commissioned	1
P-12	2026 World Cup close-out	The developing entries, which are provisionally locked until the tournament ends	1 — time-critical
P-13	Negreira procedural monitoring	The two thresholds that would change the matter’s status: an order opening the oral-trial phase, or an order of dismissal	1 — time-critical
P-4	A La Liga club-match incident ledger	The central match-manipulation question. Without it the project cannot test that claim at all.	2
P-5	The PSG period	U-1, the gap identified as highest-priority before any research began	2
P-10	A targeted document-retrieval pass	Several inaccessible items at once — the cheapest high-value item on the list	2

Records that are still moving carry the date on which their position was last accurate, on the record itself. The full research status, section by section, is published at the executive research status.