Barça is analyzing how to restructure its basketball section after the team hit rock bottom this Sunday with a defeat at Bàsquet Girona. The club has dismissed Joan Peñarroya, is looking for a replacement to revitalize the project from the bench, and, despite budget limitations, is exploring options to strengthen its frontcourt. The Terrassa-born coach will be replaced on an interim basis by Óscar Orellana. Joan Laporta's favorite is Xavi Pascual, but the coach is asking for a long-term contract and that his vision for building a competitive team be respected, a condition that entails significant financial demands that the club rejected a few months ago. "After Roger Grimau, there were approaches, but they didn't turn into any concrete offers. They asked me if I was available," Pascual explained in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio.

After two very poor seasons and with an economic climate that doesn't allow for major investments, Barça's basketball team needs to reinvent itself. The big problem is that the Blaugrana club can't compete with the large European budgets, but neither can it imitate the strategy it implemented in football, when cash constraints served to accentuate the focus on young players. The new international landscape allows American universities to offer contracts that the club can't afford. This causes promising young players to leave for the United States at an increasingly early age. The departures of Kasparas Jakucionis and Dame Sarr will be emulated by Mathieu Grujicic and Raúl Villar.

Getting the basketball section back on track is the first big challenge for Xavier O'Callaghan, who was appointed Barça's new director of professional sports a few weeks ago. The former handball player, a man who has Joan Laporta's full confidence, adds the coordination of sporting decisions to the management side that he already controlled. "When the president asks you to do something, you can't say no. I had no doubts," he acknowledged a few days ago in an interview on TV Vandellòs.