The shameless campaign of the Barça board to force the departure of Leo Messi from the club, make money from his transfer and turn around last season's red numbers has had its response from the Argentinian star: the greatest player in the 120 year history of the club sent a burofax to its administration on Tuesday expressing his desire to leave Futbol Club Barcelona. Josep Maria Bartomeu, the president who inherited a club at the summit of world sport, with a style of play that was identified and envied all over the world of football thanks to Cruyff and Guardiola, with the best player on the planet in its team and surrounded by a unique grouping of stars, has let it all turn to dust in just a few seasons. Years of a presidency plagued by errors, stubbornly intent on changing the DNA of Barcelona and obsessed with creating division between supporters and detractors rather than bringing people together and listening to those voices who had been there longest.
It is no longer a question of how much Barça will get for Messi, nor how long it will take to have a competitive team again, something that often depends on unpredictable factors: today, on this sad day for Barcelona football, although those matters are important, they are secondary. There is only one significant matter at the moment: to force the resignation of Bartomeu and his board of directors. Get rid of the lot of them after the devastation they have wrought and try to save the club with a new board of directors. Better today than tomorrow. The new president cannot and must not arrive in March, which is when the board wants to call elections. For the good of the club.
Bartomeu will no longer be the president who lays the foundations for the new stadium, as he intended and aspired to be. He will be the president who, through his contempt and an unparalleled, irresponsible media protection, will have ensured that the world's best player is packing his bags, having had enough of the lies and the board's money-wasting on defamation campaigns against him and other players through the company I3 Ventures. Covid-19 and the closure of the stadium for football matches can no longer cover up the utter dispair of the fans, as evidenced a few hours after Messi's announcement by protests at the stadium gates. Barcelona urgently needs to find a way to respond adequately to a crisis that is without precedents.
When Barça communicated by phone a few days ago to Luis Suárez that he was not part of the club's plans and should listen to offers, it is clear that the strategy was aimed at an even more important goal than that of the Uruguayan player's departure: to pressure Messi into making a decision like the one he has now made, by depriving him of his most important ally on the playing field. Barça has exploded and is a club adrift. There is not another minute to waste.