Barça's general manager resigns

BarcelonaAs ARA has learned, Manel del Río will cease to be the CEO 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 club's management committee and confirmed that he was leaving the post. The position of CEO remains, for the moment, vacant. Sergio Serrano, who has held the financial directorship of the organization since this season, will assume a good part of the functions for the time being. Sources consulted at the 'blaugrana' club assure that the departure is "by mutual agreement" and value Del Río's "great work". "We are beginning a new financial management and a new stage," they state to this newspaper from Barça's executive offices.

Del Río leaves the post just one year after assuming it. The decision, which had been brewing for months, is framed within a context of great complexity. And the fact is that, despite having recovered a certain normality regarding financial fair play, the institution's delicate economic situation, with the need to have had to raise another multi-million euro 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 news at the Aristides Maillol offices. Just as it happened with Marcel Ramírez, replaced in the financial directorship by Sergio Serrano, Del Río leaves the general directorship vacant, 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 CEO, Del Río -who arrived at the club at the hands of Laporta in 2022- had led Barça's corporate and financial areas. The figure most similar that the entity had had to the position of CEO 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 notable departures in the economic management area. 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, ended 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 began 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. Within this framework, 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 arrived to take the place of Marcel Ramírez, whom the club decided to dismiss after the transfer market. Finally, he will terminate his contract this September 30th. Key in economic presentations and in the knowledge of the financial fair play rule, he left after a decade at the Camp Nou, where he had climbed positions 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, who was promoted to Meléndez's position. Del Río, incorporated by Laporta, is no longer the general director of Barça.