A group of businessmen, members of Barça, usually meet in an elegant private club above the Diagonal, close to where John Laporta He has his professional office, where, among other things, he can eat, watch some games and discuss the club’s economy. they share excels extracted from the annual report posted on the web and have long concluded that the survival of FC Barcelona as we know it is in serious danger.
They do not have the will to form an opposition group, but they do feel the need to somehow transmit to the Barcelona masses the delicate situation of the accounts in view of the size of the debt, the imbalance between income and expenses and the financial adventure of the Espai Barça. The only thing missing now is the scandal of the payments to the former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), José María Enríquez Negreira, to confirm that FC Barcelona needs professionalization in its management. “Barça’s reputation has been very touched,” admits one of its members.
There have always been groups on the periphery of FC Barcelona that monitor the entity’s dynamics with their particular gaze. “The little chapels of a lifetime,” says a club executive. Right now it is said that an opposition group to the current junta is being forged. In any case, the feeling of disappointment and anger with the leaders of the 21st century has become transversal. There is a feeling that there has been a frivolous management of money that belongs to everyone and no one, that there has been carelessness, a lack of transparency and wasteful actions that have only accentuated the traditional distrust of boards of directors, from Gaspart to Laporta passing through Rosell and Bartomeu.
debug responsibilities
«This scandal ends up verifying the failure of the generation of 2003. They arrived and made a necessary revolution, but then they succumbed to internecine wars, the judicialization of the club, actions of responsibility, the forensic, the Barçagate and now this,” he says. Marc Ciria, financier and expert in Barça accounts. “The club must do a resetregenerate the government model, professionalize and purify responsibilities in the face of a situation of clear conflict of interest that should never have been allowed and in which the highest representatives of that generation of managers from 2003 have been involved”.
“It confirms the failure of the generation of 2003. They arrived and made a necessary revolution, but then they succumbed to internecine wars, the prosecution of the club, liability actions, forensic, Barçagate and now this”
Marc Ciria, financier and expert in Barça accounts
The call Barca brand, which prides itself on transmitting exemplary values, has been seriously stained. The news has appeared in media around the world, from L’Equipe, al Daily Mail o The Athletic. But it is evident that nowhere is the bonfire encouraged with the fervor of Madrid. From its media, brutal pressure is exerted on all organisms and even the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchezhas intervened in the matter.
Sometimes it is deliberately confused, because if the contracting of Enríquez Negreira It is extremely embarrassing for Barça (and for Spanish football), it is also undeniable that it had no impact on the competition, despite sometimes trying to project the image of systemic aid to the Barça club. Serve as a button how the director of an important Madrid newspaper spurred his writing this week: “I want to see Barça in Second Division!” He said loudly.
But the damage to its prestige has been done mainly by the club itself and has the potential to affect Espai Barça. It will be seen if there are repercussions in the courts. Some Barcelona fans with financial knowledge that this newspaper has consulted explain that they would not be surprised if the board now sees itself with the obligation to make the guarantees more expensive for those interested in investing in the reform of the Camp Nou.
Financing more expensive?
«Money is scary and investors look a lot at how things are done where they put their capital. Maybe we have already lost some investors or we have to issue bonds at very high interest rates. I imagine that in the club they trust that within three or four weeks the soufflé will go down and the financial scandal will be forgotten. We’ll see”, explains a member of the club described at the beginning of the text.
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Ciria, who was an adviser to Laporta, believes that curves are coming. «If I will represent a possible investor, I would ask for a thorough explanation and the debugging of responsibilities. This reputational damage can also affect the current financing renewal itself. The Camp Nou operation, they estimate, can go from 8% to 10%, or even more. “It will be an expensive operation,” he adds.
They are voices that advise putting the brake on with the Barça space: wait a couple of years while the macroeconomic situation changes (less inflation, lower interest rates), condition the Camp Nou with the money that will be invested in Montjuïc and clean up the club’s accounts in the meantime to undertake the reform from a better position, with greater control. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Barça, with its great reputational crisis on its back, goes on the market. The future of the club passes through here.
