Bartomeu's crooked smile: the rise and fall of a president

• Resignation.The Generalitat finishes off Bartomeu: he resigns as president of Barcelona

• Dates. New president, deadlines, elections ... What will happen from now on in Barcelona?

Few things more ridiculous than football metaphors put in the mouth of someone with a tie.

What difference does it make.

"We will work rigorously and sweat the shirt."

was euphoric.

He had just

defeated

in the 2015 elections (25,823 votes, 54.63%).

The partners did not notice that their president had attended the elections still accused of the

, a mess from which he escaped allowing Barça to be sentenced as an institution for a tax offense.

The stage engineered by his guide,

, was made of papier-mâché.

It was crowned by a plastic in which

,

and

.

Trident and triplet.

It must be enough.

But the rigor was ruin.

And the shirt, returned to Nike because it faded due to sweat and that if it still has the same shield it is because the delegates did not laugh at the president, it was trampled in Rome, Liverpool and Lisbon.

Bartomeu's smile was the misery of Barcelona.

Josep Lluís Núñez

, who after being the club's viceroy for 22 years ended up in the Quatre Camins jail, could always defend that it was he who raised the residence of La Masia, who expanded the Camp Nou, who multiplied the patrimony, or who admitted a marriage of convenience to

to win the Wembley European Cup.

, still with the bug of returning to power, found in

the coach who would help him build one of the best teams ever.

trusted his good fortune, but also his condemnation, to Neymar.

The judicial trace of his signing still haunts him.

And Bartomeu?

He won 13 titles with the first team.

The work of government of Rosell, his mentor, continued.

He admitted his friends to the board, from dentists to decorators.

And he thought that forming a G-1 with himself, as Núñez had ruled, would be enough.

From checking invoices to deciding the transfers.

Up to six vice-presidents (

,

,

,

,

and who should be his dolphin,

) could already

, who would already be there to fulfill all his functions.

If there was psychic wear, his collaborators never perceived it.

"Sleep soundly," said one of his managers when he tried to block Messi's escape this summer and the followers threatened to storm the offices.

Because nobody resisted as long and better than Bartomeu, who was taught that storms in football always subside.

Until the Titanic ended up vomiting water all over the club's toilets.

From denying Cruyff to the apology of 'cruyffism'

Bartomeu got used from the moment Rosell gave him the presidency (January 23, 2014) to airing crises with high doses of propaganda.

From denying Cruyff - indelible that image of the Dutchman returning the badge of honorary president when Rosell was still president - to surrendering himself to the apology of

.

One day a tribute;

another, the name of a field;

the next, a statue.

Although nothing seemed to work better than seduction at close range.

And her innocent smile.

The people began to call him

.

He was so funny that he even photographed himself with a figure from the Doraemon anime the day he invited a

to the box

.

It did not matter that the president had denounced him a few months earlier.

Bartomeu, who should be reflected in the hardships of that character, also believed that a cosmic cat would save him from any problem.

Until Messi could no longer cover more shame.

He was still acting president - he did not go to the polls until a year and a half after Rosell resigned - and Bartomeu had already learned how to solve problems.

FIFA sanctioned the club without signing for breaking the regulations in the hiring of minors.

Bartomeu found the solution.

He unfolded a huge banner at the Camp Nou with the slogan: "

."

He saved that crisis by executing

, who happened to point out the president in a brief television intervention.

Because Bartomeu also got a shredder.

He was the first of the five sports managers who passed through his hands, and followed by

,

,

and

.

The Berlin Champions and the beginning of the decline

He had no choice but to assume that he had to go through his first and only elections when in January 2015

, whom he had hired to replace

, faced Messi after a substitution in Anoeta.

The Asturian assumed that everything had to go through the trident, and the season ended with the League, Cup and, above all, the Champions League titles.

That night, at the Berlin Olympics, not only did Bartomeu secure a new mandate in which he waved the lure of 1,000 million income and the construction of the pharaonic Espai Barça, but the club also began its process of decomposition.

Nothing was for the better.

Bartomeu neglected the reformulation of that champion team.

He avoided locker room problems through renovations and money.

And he saw how Qatar, with PSG as striker, took its particular revenge after breaking the sponsorship agreement with the emirate on the shirt.

Neymar fled to Paris in exchange for 222 million euros.

In the Barcelona directive they only believed the matter until they saw the lawyers enter the Camp Nou with the briefcases.

Bartomeu arranged it in his own way and ordered the most expensive signings in the club's history to be hired:

first,

later.

A wild and out-of-the-market maneuver that was reminiscent of that trip by

to London to reinvest the money obtained by Figo in

and

.

would be the third leg of an outlay of 440 million euros.

Coutinho, on loan to Bayern, scored two of Lisbon's goals.

Dembélé spent three years in the infirmary.

Griezmann, for whom an extra 15 million euros had to be paid for having negotiated behind Atlético's back months after the Frenchman poured out of the managers in La Decision, became an indecipherable specter.

That documentary, by the way, was produced by Piqué.

Free verse.

The dismissal of Valverde

Bartomeu found in

the right coach to manage the decline.

Club man, efficient and disciplined.

Despite being aware that the president would not be able to limit the growing power of the dressing room, he won over the locker room to get ahead.

He won two Leagues and a Cup that were barely celebrated.

The continental collapses in Rome (3-0) and especially in Anfield (4-0) spoiled a trajectory that Bartomeu insisted on extending after losing the Copa del Rey final against Valencia.

The president preferred to fire Valverde eight months later, in January 2019, after an overseas Spanish Super Cup in Jeddah, with the leading team and alive in all competitions.

The substitute selection process was nonsense.

, CEO of the club, was caught with

in Doha to negotiate with

without Valverde having been fired.

Grau, wearing clothes to walk around the house, and Abidal were photographed with the injured Dembélé to hide.

The picture was grotesque.

Xavi refused to accept the offer.

So did Koeman, at that time pending to lead the Netherlands in a European Championship that would end up being postponed due to the pandemic.

and

were probed.

And who came to the bench was

, a technician who went from caressing meek cows to being despised by sacred cows.

He arrived without having won any title, and left with equally empty hands.

And with one of the biggest embarrassments in the club's history: 2-8 against Bayern.

The ridicule of Lisbon was nothing more than the consequence of all those tumults generated in the presidential office.

Like

, still in the judicial investigation phase, and for which Bartomeu and Masferrer hired a conglomerate of companies led by the Uruguayan Carlos Ibáñez to monitor the networks after 1-O.

"Someone has reached into the box," cried Vice President Emili Rousaud after Bartomeu invited him to leave because he believed that he had been leaking information to the media.

" It

is an outrage that the club has spent money on criticizing" denounced Pique in an interview with journalist

of

.

Messi's burofax

Bartomeu, locked in his bunker, went back to playing with the ball in the walnut shells.

He announced elections for March, which allowed him to end his term on June 30, 2021 and close the next fiscal year.

It attracted Koeman, the Wembley hero.

And after ordering the Dutchman to get rid of Luis Suárez, Messi's emotional crutch, he blocked the Argentine's departure.

The best player in the history of the club had decided that his goodbye did not deserve more than a burofax.

The Barcelona partners said enough.

Encouraged by a cross-cutting initiative, although it was led by the candidate

, they flocked to sign in favor of holding a vote of no confidence.

19,380 rubrics were validated.

The president tried to resist.

And buy time.

Before, it was convenient to sweep a ramshackle mansion.

To settle the salary cuts in a club that has a debt of 820 million euros, with the most expensive staff in the world.

He appealed to the Civil Guard for the body to prove fraud based on five suspicious signatures.

And, in the end, to the pandemic.

"We are not responsible for the seven plagues of Egypt", said its last economic vice president,

.

Until Bartomeu ran into an enemy he had neglected.

The Generalitat refused from day one to postpone the referendum despite the decided advance of the Covid and the latest declaration of the state of alarm.

The Barcelona directors left their positions murmuring about a political plot against him.

Blaming the sovereign sectors in the stage, with whom the president never communicated, no matter how many his balances.

Although the agony of the Bartomeu regime was such that neither politics, nor even the pandemic, are held up as alibis.

The getaway came to an end.

The smile finally twisted.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Neymar

• Ousmane Dembélé

• Luis Suarez

• Coutinho

• Ronald Koeman

• Spain Supercup

• Quique Setien

• FIFA

• Ernesto Valverde

• Egypt

• Civil Guard

• Pep Guardiola

• Paris

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