Barcelona President Josep Maria Bartomeu resigned from office on Tuesday before a vote of censorship to be developed next month after nearly 20,000 club members signed a petition for their departure.
He also resigned the rest of the club’s board of directors.
“It’s a thoughtful, serene and informed decision,” Bartomeu said in a televised speech.
Bartomeu, 57, was subjected to growing criticism over the past year due to worsening club finances and the team’s decline on the field, which reached a head stage with his 8–2 loss to Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-finals in August.
He was also heavily criticized after Lionel Messi applied to leave the club following the humiliation of the Champions League and faced a vote of no confidence from the club’s members.
The executive tried to convince the Catalan government to desecrated the vote of censure due to the coronavirus pandemic but was not supported. In his speech, Bartomeu called the government’s decision irresponsible, while thanking the club and said he could not have resigned sooner.
“Following the elimination of Champions it was easy to resign, but we had to guarantee the future of the club in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis,” he said, adding later that, following conflicts with Messi, he could not have let the club be led by external and temporary figures.
“Who would have signed a technician or signed players or secured Messi’s continuity or adjusted wages? As a board we had an obligation to do so,” he said.
Bartomeu replaced Sandro Rosell in 2014. (Report by Joan Faus, Andrei Khalip and Julien Pretot; Edited in Spanish by Javier Leira and Manuel Farías)
