A year ago, at the end of April, FC Barcelona announced in a press conference, citing the official version, “the most important financing project in history.” The operation covered the entire Espai Barça, including the Spotify Camp Nou, the Palau Blaugrana and the Campus, for a total of 1,450 million euros. In that transcendent appearance, the president Joan Laporta, the vice president of the economic area, Eduard Romeu, the corporate director, Maribel Meléndez, and the financial director, Manel del Río, offered the pertinent explanations. Today, if that staging were performed again, half of the actors would remain, from quartet to duet. Meléndez left her position three weeks ago and Romeu followed in her footsteps this morning. Laporta is increasingly alone and around him the talented executive, who is not that abundant, is getting off the ship citing personal reasons but with an undercurrent of discontent with what is happening there.
Laporta’s second term is not going as he imagined. A review of the promises made in the electoral campaign is equivalent to crossing them out one after one. There is no need to list them. Messi should be here, Ferran Reverter was the best general director on the planet and the European Super League, panacea for all ills, would already be being played. Parallel to this lack of harmony between theory and practice, the bleeding of professionals who have been parading towards the exit is astonishing, compensated by personnel trusted by Laporta, rather as a matter of personal and even family affinity than for the value of the resumes.
The opacity in sensitive areas such as the distribution of commissions, whether in player purchase and sale operations, or in large sponsorships such as Spotify, widens the stain of suspicion on a project that, in addition to not moving forward, is seriously threatened. due to a critical financial situation, inherited by the last board but in no way improved when three years have passed since Laporta was elected.
Compliance with the budget is in danger because the move to Montjuïc leaves numbers in the red and because the alliance with business partners such as Libero has collapsed. The levers, which do not require a great imagination and lay down future income, do not give much more, the debt is a horror and the moment of truth arrives with Laporta more alone than ever, beyond his hard core, people who wants but whose personal profile is far from corresponding to the extreme situation that is being experienced, what Romeu called this morning “his praetorian guard.” We will have to see how leading partners who are investing large amounts of money, including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, respond to this new resignation. Romeu’s departure affects the waterline.
This new crisis also confirms FC Barcelona’s inability to enjoy its present. Economically straitened and climbing at a slow pace to recover the lost status in football, access to the quarterfinals of the Champions League after four years of absence deserved a period of peace that the club has dynamited from within. It has not been the press that has diverted attention from the success. Not after Tuesday’s game or today, Thursday. Barça has no remedy.
