Barcelona ‘agrees to join the European Super League’ with the resignation of President Bartomeu | Football

The last act of Josep María Bartomeu as president of Barcelona was to announce the club’s participation in a European Super League.

Bartomeu revealed that Barça had adhered to the proposal during a 35-minute speech to confirm his resignation on Tuesday night. This participation is subject to ratification and approval in an assembly of members. The Catalan club has also agreed on a new format in the Club World Cup led by FIFA.

Last week, it was revealed that plans for a lucrative pan-European breakaway league involving top English clubs to replace the Champions League had been reactivated, and banking giant JP Morgan was asked to seek funding for a new competition. The league would potentially comprise 18 teams, including five English teams and teams from Spain, Italy, Germany and France, and would have neither promotion nor relegation, according to proposals first reported by Spanish media Vozpopuli and Sky News. Real Madrid, advised by investment company Key Capital, is said to be behind a plan for a European Super League, first reported by Der Spiegel in 2018.

“I can announce extraordinary news,” said Bartomeu. “Yesterday we accepted a proposal to participate in a future European Super League, which would guarantee the future financial sustainability of the club. And we have accepted the future CWC format ”.

His statement was later criticized by La Liga president Javier Tebas, who described the plans for a European Super League as “weak and imaginary” and declared that it would lead to ruin for the clubs.

“Unfortunate @jmbartomeu statement on his last day about @FC Barcelona join a weak and imaginary competition that would be their undoing, ”he wrote. “It confirms his ignorance about the football industry. Sad end for a president with successes and lately many errors ”.

Bartomeu dropped the bomb the night he announced his resignation as president of Barcelona, ​​taking his entire board of directors with him. He did not give more details or answer questions during his appearance, which was a long farewell speech with an air of victimhood and self-justification in which he complained about much of the criticism to which he had been subjected.

Under increasing pressure in recent months, but seemingly determined to hold onto power despite the ongoing crisis at the club, the decision to leave en masse was finally agreed upon during a board meeting Tuesday night. Bartomeu later denied trying to hold onto power, insisting that it would have been easy to walk away after the 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich, but that he could not leave the club in the hands of an interim administration at a time of transition. and economic crisis. That included, he added, having to figure out Lionel Messi’s future.

Bartomeu will not now face the motion of censure from the club’s members and will leave with immediate effect. In fact, the decision to resign was made after the Catalan government refused to postpone the vote of no confidence until mid-November as proposed by the board. Bartomeu accused the Generalitat of “irresponsibility” by not giving them time to prepare special measures due to the pandemic and affirmed that they had indeed been forced to resign to honor the club’s own statues.

An interim board led by Carles Tusquets, an economics professor at the University of Barcelona, ​​will take over and prepare for the presidential elections. Bartomeu and his board may face civil actions that hold them personally responsible for the budget deficit during the period of his administration since 2014.

On Monday Bartomeu had insisted: “there is no reason to present [my] resign ”, adding:“ it is not a good idea to leave the club in the hands of an administrator ”. However, he always knew that this scenario was the likely result of the vote of no confidence. The signatures of nearly 20,000 members had been gathered to force a referendum that Bartomeu had no realistic prospect of surviving, despite needing only a third of the votes.

Bartomeu leaves as arguably the least popular president in Barcelona’s history, facing a crisis at nearly every level at the Camp Nou and a breakdown in boardroom-dressing room relations. In the summer, he blocked the exit of Lionel Messi, who later publicly admitted that he had only stayed to avoid ending up on the pitch with the club. In the interview in which he announced that he was staying, the Argentine insisted: “there has been no project or anything for a long time.”

Now, seven weeks after Messi was forced to stay, Bartomeu and his board are gone. He leaves behind a landscape-changing decision not just at his club but across the continent, a legacy that means European football may never be the same again.