Josep Maria Bartomeu: "Under what parameter am I the worst president in Barça's history?"

BarcelonaJosep Maria Bartomeu (Barcelona, 1963) arrived at the presidency of Barça with the resignation of Sandro Rosell in 2014. A year later, and thanks to a treble, he would win the elections by a landslide. but he could not finish his term, a victim of poor sporting results and the economic crisis derived from the coronavirus. He resigned in October 2020. Five and a half years later, he speaks to ARA after declining to be interviewed on various occasions. He arrives at the newsroom with documents to defend his economic management.

Why do you want to speak now?

— At first, the new board started talking about a disastrous inheritance, about the economy... this has happened to all the Barça governments. But I was surprised that they started talking about me again in these elections, five years later. [Laporta] He has justified many decisions taken by himself due to the inheritance. It's an excuse and I found it excessive. I wanted to explain myself.

What do you do today?

— Just like when I was president of Barça. In my company, Adelte, an engineering firm for ports and airports. Before I was the CEO and now I am the president. Being a director of Barça is a privilege, but you don't get any income in return. Therefore, I had to work.

Has returned to Camp Nou since you resigned?

— Before the works, yes. Since they reopened it, no. In the Palau, yes.

What do people say?

— Some look at me with a scowl, others encourage me, someone asks me for a photo... Also on the street, there are people who recognize me and sometimes we stop to talk and even to disagree.

He is often defined as the worst president in the history of Barça.

— It makes me laugh a lot when they say that. I would ask them: under what parameter? Because if it is for the sporting parameter, for example, in my six-year term I won thirteen titles. If it is for economic parameters, in six years I earned more than 100 million for Barça. And if it had not been for the pandemic, the elections would have been in June 2021 and the stadium renovation would probably have started.

During his term, fake accounts were created with club money to try to discredit opponents, journalists, and even players on the squad.

— This is not entirely true. In 2017, following Neymar's departure and around October 1st, there was a lot of noise on social media and conversations that Barça did not control. We had pressure from sponsors and commissioned monitoring to know what was being said and to be able to develop our strategies. But the idea was to always do it with positive messages. It is not true that Barça decided to create fake profiles.

But they were created.

— This is in a judicial headquarters, in the investigation phase. I already explained and declared that I did not know that these profiles existed.

Do you regret hiring this service?

— No, because it was very important to know what happens on social media. In fact, Barça currently continues to do this monitoring.

Another controversial case. You stopped payments to Negreira when he ceased to be vice-president of the CTA.

— This is not correct, I already declared it in court. We informed you that we decided to dispense with your services in March because we were restructuring the budget and wanted to do the reports internally. Furthermore, VAR was about to come in and we believed they were no longer needed. Negreira left the CTA later. The decision resulted in significant savings, because the price paid was high.

Did you ever doubt the conflict of interest that Enríquez Negreira's company had?

— I found out later, when the father sent a registered letter. I asked what that was and they tell me that, from the company Dasnil, one of the partners is Mr. Negreira. We didn't know, we thought it was the son's. All of this is quite difficult to explain, I understand.

Barçagate, Negreira, the forensic… has five open cases from his time as president.

— What I find most curious is that in no case am I investigated for having enriched myself, but for mismanagement. This is unusual, because whenever someone is investigated for disloyal administration, it is for having pocketed money. And this was not my case, evidently.

What is the most serious mistake you made as president?

— Perhaps Zubizarreta's dismissal. It felt bad to me. And also not having started to change the generation of players in 2019, after Liverpool.

Is Barça's 2026 team better or worse than the 2020 team?

— It depends. Sportingly we have taken a step forward. I am very happy that a generational change has been made and that Flick has consolidated it. I applaud the current board for the first football team. In other club matters, I have disagreements.

In which ones?

— The economy, the relationship with partners, professional sports at the Palau, amateur sports... There are many shortcomings. These are things that regularly come out in the media.

Part of the criticism of Laporta are the renewed contracts for Ter Stegen, Lenglet, De Jong and Piqué just before his resignation. According to Laporta, it greatly conditioned the club's economy.

— Let's go back. In March 2020, confinement begins and at that moment we have to close the club. Money stops coming in and a 14% reduction is agreed with the players, which means 90 million in savings. We speak with the Procicat and they tell us that we will surely be able to reopen the stadium with the new season, but in August they tell us no. Then we talk to the players to tell them that their salary would be reduced by 20%. And here a train wreck occurs, because they say no. Therefore, we have to open a negotiation table. In parallel, we tell the players that whoever wants to can postpone payments until later, when the club recovers income. And there are only four who say, "We want to do it, we want to help." A new contract is made for them in which they earn less in those first two years and will earn more in the last ones.

Regardless of covid, there had already been an upward trend in salaries for years. Do you think they overdid it with the renewals?

— It is true that the salary mass goes from 365 to 521 million in the 17-18 season with the renewals of Messi, Alba, Piqué and Busquets. But income also increased. It is evident that we were at the limit of fair play of the League, but we could afford it because the club was invoicing a lot.

From the outside, it seemed like they had lost control of the locker room.

— This is not true. It makes me laugh a lot because I've also heard that Messi was in charge, that the locker room decided; all of this is not true. Obviously Messi had the right to say whatever he wanted, and surely he was in charge in the locker room, but not in the club.

Messi's renewal in 2017 was stratospheric. Does he regret having done it at that moment of nerves, after Neymar's departure?

— It was not a time for nerves. It is true that there is a little fear of someone wanting to touch Messi, who then had a clause of 400 million and it goes up to 700. And a renewal meant paying him more money to protect our main club asset.

How did Messi's burofax play out?

— When he says he wants to leave, I clearly explain to him, his family, and his agents that it is impossible. That Barça needs him, not just from a sporting point of view; also economically. He wanted a release clause. In the end, he understood and stayed, hoping there would be a change in the 2021 elections.

But then they already had fair play problems and with their departure a lot of salary mass would have been freed.

— I have always said that Messi was paid little for what he contributed, both at a sporting and economic or commercial level. And he was not at the end of his sporting career: two years later he won the World Cup. I know that Messi would have loved to participate in the squad's renewal, with these young players who are here now, who are also part of this famous legacy. But they fired him and it couldn't happen.

Was he fired or could they not renew him because of the inheritance?

— It is not the fault of the inheritance. It is the fault of fair play because the new board inflated the losses to 555 million. When the League receives it, it decides to do a second audit and believes that the losses are not these, as there are provisions worth 283 million. But Barça decides to maintain its proposal, the League applies it and the club loses a fair play that, to this day, it has not yet recovered. If they had done what they had to do, Leo Messi could have been perfectly renewed and players signed.

What do you think of the new Camp Nou?

— I'm glad we're back already, even though there's still a lot of work to be done. Regarding the project changes, which are to keep the first tier and rebuild the third, placing the vip boxes higher up... I think we'll define it better when it's completely finished.

Laporta justified the changes due to the 12,000 season ticket holders who had to move from the first to the third tier, and that the third tier had structural problems.

— This season ticket thing was already planned. If we were making the first tier new, it was to improve the incline. In the last years of the term, we made all the people on the waiting list go to the third tier because we were saving seats in the first and second to relocate the affected members. Nobody would have gone to the third tier, which, by the way, it's not true that it had structural problems. All I know is that the new board changed the project and it has gone from 830 million to 1,500... and we'll see if it's not more.

Why was one and a half million paid to Laietà for dust and noise, and they didn't explain it until SER uncovered it?

— In any modification of the metropolitan plan, a series of concessions and agreements are made, and with Laietà this agreement is reached. In fact, initially we wanted to buy them the club's land, but they said no. Then they proposed a figure that we did not accept. And in the end we reached this agreement. What happens is that at the time we could not say it because we were in joint negotiation with neighbors, businesses...

If the club belongs to the members, how is it that there are so many confidentiality clauses? The complaint about Neymar's signing comes precisely because information was not given to a member.

— A member cannot say "Give me the contract for the purchase of Neymar." Then all the information we would have at Barça would be public. Confidential information is basic to not give an advantage to opponents. I am sure that big clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, Juve or PSG cannot give information to their members or shareholders.

In the Neymar case, they signed a settlement agreement where the club admitted its guilt.

— It was a good decision for the club and very painful for Sandro [Rosell] and for me, because we had the Neymar 2 case behind us and it was harming us. The settlement of 5.5 million was signed because the lawyers assured us that the club would be condemned for 22.5 million, since the Treasury interpreted that the 40 million paid to the parents for the player's economic rights were salary and not a transfer.

Viewed with perspective, did you feel politically alone as president of Barça?

— Yes. There were 20 of us on the board and there were people from the right, from the left, some independentists, others not... For me it was very important that the decisions we made were not influenced by politics. This led us to often say no to things they asked us to do. By saying no, you gain a following of people who don't like what you're doing. Politically, we never had the coverage or protection of anyone. Nor the media protection of certain outlets that were more politicized. On the contrary. When things went wrong, it turned against us.