The Barca President decides to leave after heavy criticism over decisions that has affected the Catalan club

By: Emmanuel Mendez

The entire board of directors also decided to leave which leaves many Barca fans happy. Credit: fcbarcelona.com

October 27th was an unexpected but exciting day for Barca fans because FC Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu decided to resign along with the entire board of directors. 

This announcement was a shock because Bartomeu stated before he wouldn’t resign despite all the controversy surrounding him and wanting to wait until the Barca election to take place, which is next year. Now with Bartomeu out, Barca might avoid costly mistakes that were made in the past that could hurt the club in the future. 

Bartomeu was elected as FC Barcelona president in 2014 when the ex-president Sandro Rosell resigned. Bartomeu was the vice-president partnering with Rosell. 

There was so much controversy between the board and the fans about not using the Barca funds appropriately. Neymar Jr. was an exciting prospect when he was 17 and at 21 Barca signed him for apparently 40 million euros. 

Rosell didn’t want to deal with the situation, and ended up quitting to avoid any possible complications in court.

Bartomeu would claim to have been successful in 2015 when Barcelona won the Champions League. Despite this, after the 2014-15 season, things were soon to be going downhill. With failed transfers and no attention to their famous youth academy, La Masia, Barcelona`s club reputation was at risk. 

A clear example of a failed transfer was former player Arda Turan. Barcelona spent 40m on him and he did not live up to expectation. 

The Turkish player did well in his former club, Atletico de Madrid, but most fans speculate the reason he was brought in was to get more revenue from Turkish fans who love Barca. The overspending on transfers would also be a huge problem for Barcelona. 

Neymar is one of the best players in the world and left Barca to go to PSG for a record transfer fee of 222 million euros. Barca needed to replace him because he was a world-class player, but because  they were desperate, they brought in three great players and overpaid. 

They brought in Philippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembele, and Antione Griezmann for a total of over 350 million euros. All three have yet to show their potential to fill Neymar’s spot.

La Masia is one of the greatest football academies in the entire world that has produced many great Barca players and legends such as Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, and Lionel Messi. Instead of trusting in the youth like former presidents, Bartomeu decided to spend big money on big players which could be a risk and as we see now, it could often times not work out. 

Barcelona has spent over 1.23 billion euros since Bartomeu became Barca president and right now they are currently 488 million in debt and have losses of 97 million euros. 

Recently there has been controversy with Bartomeu dealing with the situation with Messi. Bartomeu`s actions with Barca and the poor results on the pitch left Messi unhappy and it was reported that he wanted to leave the club which was something unheard of since Messi has stated before he would like to retire at Barca because he loves the club so much. 

Bartomeu was desperate to stay with Messi. They did not let him leave unless a club paid his release clause of 700 million, which is almost impossible. With all the turmoil and unhappiness at the club, Bartomeu decides to step down, which could be the start of the resurgence of FC Barcelona.