The board of Futbol Club Barcelona, with its president at the helm, Josep Maria Bartomeu, is still taking cover while it waits for the storm to pass and the institutional crisis, which set in after it was revealed that the club had hired a company to defame players, former players, businesspeople and politicians, to disappear as quickly as it arrived. This is no longer able to happen because, in the meantime, complaints have been lodged, club president Bartomeu himself has had to give an explanation to the players and a clearly inadequate firebreak has been constructed through the rescission of the contract with the company I3 Ventures. It is hard to imagine what explanations he could have given to football players like Leo Messi and Gerard Piqué, two of those affected by the defamatory statements of the company which Barça hired. Furthermore, it has all coincided with a period when the Argentinean star has been starting to feel uncomfortable with many recent goings-on at the club.
Facing an avalanche of criticism of the attitude the board has taken, and with Bartomeu perplexed by what seems to have been a case of revenge within the board itself, the wall of contention has been built based on two premises: the I3 Ventures company has been working with Barça since 2017 - supposedly it has been paid a little less than one million euros for six commissions - and the assignment it had from the club was technical and did not include defamation. Beyond this information, there is the most absolute silence. No press conference by the Barça organization and very poorly judged management of communications, not up to scratch for this era, more reminiscent of an organization with something to hide than a club that wants to explain itself so that not a shadow of doubt remains about its actions. Honestly, it's been amateurish and insufficient for those of us who were still thinking that what was published could have been denied in one way or another, as it was hard to believe that such a fool's errand could have been taken on.
The explanations are too inconsistent: how can it be believed that in three years there has been no follow-up by the club to the work I3 Ventures has been doing? One million euros is a lot of money for no one to have had the responsibility to assess the work done. Or is the club simply in the habit of dishing out its money bounteously? Then there is the firm which was signed up, I3 Ventures, with a single administrator, Carlos Ibáñez Constantino, who has a long history in the world of data and social media manipulation. When you put yourself into the hands of a company with that reputation, maybe the strange thing is that anything at all goes right and it costs a lot to convince public opinion of the contrary.
The fact that Barça plays its next game at home - on Saturday 22nd - against Eibar, in the midst of the type of domestic debacle it seemed to have grown out of, will make it possible to see if the scandal has hit home for supporters and what their position is. The verdict of the club members who, ultimately, impose and dispose of presidents and the ethical line which must never be crossed.