Saturday 28/March/2026 – 10:57 PM
Josep Maria Bartomeu, club president, spoke Barcelona The former spoke about his term and raised controversy about his legacy in the club, stressing that he was surprised by the return of talk about him during the last elections, five years after the end of his term, considering that some of the justifications that Laporta gave to justify his current decisions regarding the bad legacy in the club were exaggerated, and that he wanted to clarify his position directly.
Statements of former Barcelona president Bartomeu
Former Barcelona president Bartomeu said during radio statements a short while ago: In the beginning, the new council started talking about a bad legacy and the economy, and this happened with all Barcelona’s administrations, but what surprised me was that they returned to talking about me in these elections after five years. Joan Laporta justified many of the decisions he himself made with legacy. This is just an excuse, and it seemed exaggerated to me. I wanted to explain my position.
Regarding his description as the worst president in Barcelona’s history, Bartomo said: This makes me laugh a lot, based on what standard? During my six-year tenure, I won 13 titles, and from an economic standpoint, in 6 years I generated more than 100 million for Barcelona. If there had not been a pandemic, the elections would have been in June 2021 and the stadium renovation process might have begun.
He explained: I did not contract a company to criticize the players. In 2017, after the departure of Neymar and the events of October 1, there was a lot of noise on social media and conversations that Barcelona had no control over.
He stressed: We were under pressure from sponsors, so we commissioned a monitoring process to know what was being said and be able to develop our strategies, but the idea was always to do this with positive messages. It is not true that Barcelona decided to create fake accounts.
After creating these accounts, Bartoimo responded: This matter is before the judiciary, and is in the investigation stage. I previously explained and stated that I was not aware of the existence of these accounts, and I do not regret it, because it was very important to know what was happening on social media. In fact, Barcelona is currently still carrying out this monitoring.
After the journalist asked him, “You stopped payments to Negreira when he was no longer vice-president of the referees’ committee?”, Bartomeu replied: “That is not true, and I have already stated that in court. We informed him in March that we had decided to dispense with his services because we were restructuring the budget and wanted to prepare reports internally. In addition, VAR technology was about to enter, and we thought that his services were no longer necessary. Negreira later left the referees’ committee. This decision represented an important saving, because the amount being paid was high.
He revealed: The biggest mistake during my administration was dismissing Andoni Zubizarreta from the sports department, and not changing the generation of players after the Liverpool match.
In response to the journalist’s question to him, “Part of Laporta’s criticism relates to renewing the contracts of Ter Stegen, Lenglet, De Jong, and Pique before your resignation, and he says that it greatly affected the club’s economy?” He said: Let’s go back. In March 2020, the closure began, and at that time we were forced to close the club. Revenues stopped, and it was agreed with the players on a 14% reduction in salaries, which saved 90 million.
He continued: We spoke with the competent authorities and they informed us that perhaps the stadium could be reopened with the new season, but in August they said no, then we spoke with the players to inform them that their salaries would be reduced by 20%, and here a clash occurred, because they refused, so we had to open a negotiating table.
He added: At the same time, we told the players that whoever wants can postpone their dues until a later time, when the club recovers its revenues, and only four players agreed and said: “We want to do this, we want to help,” so new contracts were signed for them in which they will receive lower salaries in the first two years, and they will receive higher salaries in the final years.
He concluded: We were on the board of directors of 20 people, and there were from the right and from the left, some of them supportive of independence and others not. For me, it was very important that our decisions not be influenced by politics, and this made us often say “no” to things that were asked of us, and when you say “no,” you win over a group of people who do not like what you are doing. Politically, we never received support or protection from anyone, not even media protection from some of the means that were more politicized. On the contrary, when things got worse, They turned against us.
