Almost no one knew. The captains of Barcelona, ​​the rest of the staff and even some managers found out about the departure of Mateu Alemany, the club’s director of football, through the statement published by the organization shortly after Barcelona won the Osasuna at Camp Nou and in a momentous match to continue rowing towards the league title. Coach Xavi Hernández and the rest of the coaching staff were also informed right after the game. Mateu Alemany, who had an offer from Aston Villa since January, has decided to leave the ship.
The reasons? The public, and no less important, is the “economically irrefutable offer” of Unai Emery’s Aston Villa, who already tried to get his services in February and has raised the stakes. Barcelona has not even considered matching it. “It’s impossible”, say club sources. But there are other internal discrepancies. The pressure generated by making a competitive team while looking for ways to lighten more than 200 million euros of wage bill has shaken Alemany, who, in addition, did not agree with some decisions related to sports planning, with the added which means having to negotiate with super agents like Jorge Mendes, who, by the way, knew that Alemany intended to leave about 15 days ago.
Agents such as Moussa Sissoko, Dembélé’s representative who met with Mateu Alemany to start talking about renewing the French winger, did not know that. Neither did Josep Maria Orobitg, who concluded with Alemany the renewal of Sergi Roberto and who was negotiating the continuity of Sergio Busquets, still pending an answer from the footballer. Although the Balearic has ended up satisfied with the proposals made to the two captains because they are adapted to the current situation of the club, it would have handled the two cases differently.
As for Leo Messi, the Balearic did not see his return as bad as long as a series of financial conditions are met, but he was worried that the club has not yet received LaLiga’s approval of the viability plan that he himself presented . Some tensions with the hard core of president Laporta have also not helped to minimize the attrition of the person who most controlled the first team’s wage bill.
Now, rather than replacing Mateu Alemany as director of football, the Blaugrana entity foresees “some changes” in the sports structure. He is also very much looking forward to the renewal of Jordi Cruyff, Alemany’s right-hand man, whose contract expires on June 30 and who, after the farewell to the Balearics, is seriously considering whether he will continue or not. his contract, that’s right”, say those around him.
Jordi Cruyff’s doubts deactivated the option of hiring Antonio Cordón. Former sports director of Betis and previously at Villarreal, Cordón coincided with Jordi Cruyff in the Chinese Chonqqing and the Ecuadorian national team.
From the Blaugrana club, they continue to study the market of names that came up after Alemany’s farewell. According to RAC1 and La Vanguardia was able to confirm, one of the possibilities is to incorporate ex-Blaugrana Deco, agent of footballers such as Raphinha, key intermediary in operations such as that of Aubameyang and current head of the Brazilian market for Blaugrana. Club sources assure this newspaper that the former player, who started in the world of representation working with Mendes, will first have to leave his representation agency due to incompatibility.
Alemany is the third strong man of the project to leave the Barcelona ship. Jaume Giró, who was in charge of the economic area during the electoral campaign, did not even get to be part of the board. He cited “personal reasons”, but there were also financial discrepancies in the configuration of the guarantee that allowed Laporta to proclaim himself president. The second was general manager Ferran Reverter. He officially left the post in February 2022 for “personal and family reasons”. The reason is that his club model did not match what president Joan Laporta had in mind, who did not end up sharing Reverter’s decision to let Leo Messi escape.
