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BARCELONA (Reuters) – Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu resigned from the club on Tuesday ahead of a vote of no confidence due next month after some 20,000 fans signed a petition demanding his resignation.
The rest of the board of directors also resigned.
“It is a well thought out, calm and informed decision” to resign, Bartomeu said in a televised speech.
The 57-year-old Bartomeu has faced mounting resentment in the past year due to the club’s worsening finances and the team’s decline on the pitch, which came to a head with their 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals of the Champions League in August. .
He has been widely criticized after talisman forward Lionel Messi requested a transfer following the Champions League humiliation and faced a vote of no-confidence from the club’s ‘partners’.
He had tried to convince the Catalan government to reject the vote of no confidence due to the coronavirus pandemic, but did not give in.
Bartomeu called the government’s decision irresponsible in his speech, while thanking the club and saying he could not have resigned earlier.
“The easiest thing after the Champions League (defeat of the League) was to resign, but decisions had to be made in the midst of an unprecedented world crisis,” he said, adding that later, following Messi’s dispute, he could not leave that the club be in charge of external and temporary figures.
“Who would have made sure Messi stayed? Who would have hired a new coach?” said Bartomeu, who replaced Sandro Rosell in Barcelona in 2014.
Messi gave Barça an official notice in August of his desire to terminate his contract before finally deciding to stay this season, the last on his current contract, because he did not want to face a legal battle with the club.
After tracing his decision to leave, the Argentine continued to attack Bartomeu in an interview in September, when he described his management of the club as a “disaster”. He also criticized Barça for the treatment it gave Luis Suárez, who left the club for Atlético de Madrid.
On the pitch, Barça’s problems have continued into the new campaign after they ended last season without trophies.
Having appointed former player Ronald Koeman as coach in the closed season, Barça have won just two of their first five league games and lost 3-1 at home to rival Real Madrid on Saturday.
(Report by Joan Faus, Andrei Khalip, and Julien Pretot; edited by Pritha Sarkar and Toby Davis)
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