BarcelonaBarça is on the verge of a decisive week for its immediate future. The numbers of the entity are still uncertain, the opponents are starting to organize, there are footballers (including the captain) uneasy about the impossibility of being registered in the League and dreams of the size of Nico Williams can only raise -se if a series of economic operations that have not yet been announced are closed. The club needs effective shots to recycle the illusions of a member who does not know when he will be able to leave exile in Montjuïc. From the offices they venture news in the coming days. “We’ll do what they let us do,” says a voice of weight in day-to-day sports. But in order for the team to be able to strengthen itself, financial injections are needed that must be validated by the board led by Joan Laporta. This Wednesday there is a meeting to move forward in this regard, and the minutes will also include a domestic issue that has created a bad mood among managers: the sending of anonymous letters to the press.
This newspaper has been aware of at least three newsrooms in Barcelona that have received at least two letters with allegedly privileged information about certain Barcelona managers and executives. One was sent at the end of November 2023 and the other, which has shaken consciences internally, in the middle of last month. The content is expressed on recycled paper, printed with few margins, in well-written and error-free Spanish. Letters, no longer than one sheet, arrive by post to the media in an envelope without a sender. They bear a stamp validated in Barcelona and are addressed to specific editors. But, beyond the forms, it is the information that is collected that has alerted Laporta. Because, on the journalists’ way to try to confirm it, the managers who come out damaged invariably find out that someone has spoken badly about them. “All this comes from within, it can’t be any other way,” said one of those involved in a conversation with ARA.
The Culer representative has received complaints from at least four managers affected by the anonymous content: the treasurer, Ferran Olivé; the economic vice president in fact, Ángel Riudalbas; the director of training football, Joan Soler, and the head of women’s football, Xavier Puig. The first three are part of the group of businessmen who helped Laporta endorse after winning the 2021 elections. Only Puig was a regular in the president’s orbit before the last elections. That the letters focus on this new Laportism has raised suspicions about the old Laportism, to the point that the president himself has met with the two sides involved to try to reduce tensions. The surviving managers of the first term who have been identified as the ideologues of the letters are Maria Elena Fort, Rafa Yuste, Josep-Ignasi Macià and Josep Cubells. They all deny having anything to do with it. On the other side of the conflict, however, they insist that the investigation should not be stopped. They maintain that the information is “friendly fire”.
From Escudero’s videos to Masip’s annual salary
“The letters have a lot of bad drool. They can only be the result of jealousy, of the feeling of painting less and less”, assures this newspaper one of the affected, who sees “100% impossible” that the level of precision of the missives born outside of Barça. An example of this extreme detail is the leaking of moves in the executive organizational chart before they are announced internally, such as the appointment of Benny Megreli, a member of the presidential cabinet (and former son-in-law of Manana Giorgadze), as responsible for the academies. Or the comment in relation to the improvised musical performances of Antonio Escudero, vice president of the club’s social area, in events with the fans and which are the meat of a video forwarded by WhatsApp. “They reached the president and he got angry with him. He told him that it was an inappropriate attitude of a representative of the entity (…). He will have to take measures against the denigration of the club’s image”, s ‘points to these facts in one of the anonymous ones, to which this newspaper has had access. A letter in which the six-digit annual salary of Enric Masip, Laporta’s adviser who recently had to close his account at X, is also provided.
The letters talk about Laporta’s “new environment”, denounce the existence of “murky business” and provide details about the private lives of some managers. They also advanced one of the causes of Eduard Romeu’s resignation: his lack of chemistry with the treasurer, Olivé. The leaders who avoided a repeat election thanks to their personal wealth, which was also used to pay the costs derived from the endorsement, are highlighted. The missives are not world news for those in charge of reporting on Barça, but they have caused an internal rift that does not help at all in terms of the stability that the institution needs so much.
Source: www.ara.cat
