The general manager of Barça quits

BarcelonaAs ARA has learned, Manel del Río will cease to be the general manager of Barça. The executive, who has already communicated his resignation to president Joan Laporta, will leave the position at the end of this month. This Monday, Del Río said goodbye to the management committee of the azulgrana entity and confirmed that he was leaving the post. The position of general manager remains, for the moment, vacant. Sergio Serrano, who has held the financial management of the entity since this season, will assume, for the time being, a good part of the functions. Sources consulted from the azulgrana club ensure that the departure is "by mutual agreement" and value "the great work" of Del Río. "We are starting a new financial management and a new stage," they state to this newspaper from the noble offices of Barça.

Del Río leaves the position just a year after assuming it. The decision, which had been brewing for months, is framed in a context of great complexity. And the fact is that, despite having recovered a certain normality regarding financial fair play, the delicate economic situation of the institution, with the need to have had to raise another multi-million dollar loan (which was recently validated by the assembly of delegate members) to finish the renovation works of the Camp Nou, has ended up translating into relevant developments in the offices of Aristides Maillol. Just as it happened with Marcel Ramírez, replaced in financial management by Sergio Serrano, Del Río leaves the general management free, a responsibility he assumed last summer after the position had been vacant for more than three years following the surprising resignation of Ferran Reverter in February 2022.

Before being general manager, Del Río -who arrived at the club thanks to Laporta in 2022- had led the corporate and financial areas of Barça. The figure most similar to the position of general manager that the entity had had in the period between February 2022, after Reverter's departure, and September 2025, when Del Río was appointed internally, had been Ferran Olivé, the treasurer. Before Reverter, there had been other high-profile departures regarding economic management. Jaume Giró did not get to take office as economic vice president after being one of the strong names of Laporta's 2021 campaign, while Eduard Romeu, a key figure in achieving the guarantees via José Elías, would end up leaving the club in 2024.Serrano, financial director, gains weight

Sergio Serrano, Barça's financial director since last June 1st, is gaining institutional weight. Trained in management and finance at Esade, he has accumulated more than 25 years of experience in the capital markets sector. He comes from Banco Sabadell, where he has held various positions since joining in 2002. He started with portfolio management and shortly after moved to more strategic areas, such as the management of corporate operations and internal reorganization processes during the most critical years of the financial crisis. In this context, he played a key role in the restructuring of CAM (Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo), which in 2011 passed into the hands of Sabadell after an adjudication process.

Serrano's arrival has filled the void left by Marcel Ramírez, who left Barça once the last transfer market ended. He had agreed to an exit that became effective then. Ramírez had been an employee of the entity since the era of Josep Maria Bartomeu and had been climbing positions. Key in economic presentations and in the knowledge of the financial fair play rule, he left after a decade at Camp Nou, where he had risen through the ranks in the field of budgetary management. In 2024, after the dismissal of Maribel Meléndez, he was promoted to financial director, a vacancy that was left, precisely, by Manel del Río, promoted to Meléndez's position. Del Río, brought in by Laporta, is no longer the general director of Barça.