Josep Maria Bartomeu has surrendered as President of Barcelona. He resigned by going with his whole board of directors with him.
The 57 year old has in recent months been feeling the squeeze especially with the increasing number of on-going crisis at the club.
The decision to leave with his whole load up was at last concurred during a board meeting on Tuesday night (27th October, 2020).
Bartomeu won’t presently face the vote of no confidence brought against him by club members and will leave with immediate effect.
The decision to leave was reached after the Catalan government refused to postpone the no-confidence motion until mid-November as the board had proposed.
An interim board will now take over and get ready for official elections. Bartomeu and his board may confront civil action holding them by and by subject for the budgetary setback over the period of his administration since 2015.
Meanwhile, on Monday 26 October, Bartomeu had insisted:
“there is no reason to present my resignation”, adding: “it is not a good idea to leave the club in the hands of an administrator”.
He always knew though that scenario was the likely outcome of the vote of no-confidence. Almost 20,000 members’ signatures had been gathered to force a referendum which Bartomeu had no realistic prospect of surviving, despite only needing a third of the vote.
Bartomeu leaves as apparently the most unpopular president in Barcelona’s history, confronting a crisis at pretty much every level at the Camp Nou and a breakdown in relations between the board room and the dressing room.
In the mid year, he blocked the quitting of Lionel Messi who at that point freely conceded that he had just remained to abstain from winding up in court with the club. Presently, seven weeks after Messi had to remain, Bartomeu and his board are gone.
