LIGA - Barca former president Bartomeu goes against Laporta

As reported by Spanish outlet As, former Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu released a detailed letter to the public today, defending the actions of the board of directors while he was president.

In it, he accuses Laporta indirectly of blaming his tenure for Barcelona's current financial woes. In the long press release, Bartomeu goes on to explain, through multiple points, how he wasn't directly responsible for the Catalans' situation. Firstly, he says that Laporta himself approved the club's economic balance for 2019-2020. He then goes on to note how his presidency ended in October 2020, something that made it impossible for him to take appropriate economic measures against the impact of the pandemic. In fact, he says, they reduced all salaries by 12% in March when the closures started. He also adds that they proposed to the players to cut their salaries by 20%, something that did not happen.

After all this, he asks Laporta how is it that in his tenure Barca keeps registering a loss of almost 500M Euros and what he's doing about it. Barca's woes seem destined to go on for a while, and Messi's departure was just a symptom of the problems the club is mired in. We'll have to wait and see what Laporta will do to mitigate the losses and bring a virtous management style to the blaugrana.