The secrets revealed by the book that portrays the decline of Barcelona: from the pass that could avert the crisis to the breakdown of the relationship between Messi and Pique

“From glory to hell”, he tells how the club went from winning the treble (Liga, Champions League and Copa del Rey) in 2015 to the deep economic crisis and running out of its star. The three authors of the work talked with Infobae and offered details of the research

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Soccer Football - Champions League - Quarter Final - FC Barcelona v Bayern Munich - Estadio da Luz, Lisbon, Portugal - August 14, 2020 Barcelona's Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez look dejected, as play resumes behind closed doors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) REUTERS/Rafael Marchante/Pool

It is no coincidence that this book begins by pointing out that Josep María Bartomeu is the second president in the history of Futbol Club Barcelona with the most titles in total and also the second in relative titles (as a percentage of the years in office). The authors point out that despite the fact that for many members and fans he is one of the two worst presidents in history (together with Joan Gaspart, at the beginning of this century), they sought to carry out a balanced investigation without falling into a certain character to explain a fall as dramatic as that of the Catalan club in recent years .

“From Glory to Hell”, which was presented in the center of Barcelona on Wednesday night, published by “Deusto” and written by three established journalists such as Sique Rodríguez, Adriá Soldevila and Sergi Escudero — discoverers of “Barçagate”, that hiring social networks from the club that ended up attacking various players, businessmen and opposition leaders - has details, anecdotes and concrete information about how an entity considered a model in the world and projected to have a surplus of 1 billion euros, owed that amount.

The book portrays “the disintegration of Barça del Triplete — winning the Spanish league, the European Champions League and the Copa del Rey in 2015 — and tries to answer “what happened between the farewell to Neymar (in 2017) and the farewell to Messi (in 2021)” and is divided into three parts, the sports, economic and institutional drifts.

Not only did Barcelona never again win a Champions League (the top goal of a football season for a big European club) since 2015, but they also suffered some very tough defeats in their eliminations, such as Juventus 3-0, Roma 3-0, Liverpool 4-0 and especially Bayern Munich's 8-2,

What was the end of the “Triplete” is added to the end of the “Trident” that Barcelona was boasting about, with the best forward in the world (Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar, who ended up leaving in all cases with conflicts) and a club that was a model until a few years ago, today generates mistrust in its creditors.

Infobae spoke exclusively with the authors of the book, who elaborated on the fall of the club and Messi's fundamental role in all these years.

-The economic, sports and institutional drift begins with the management of Bartomeu...

- I remember that when Bartomeu came in, he said that the club should be run by executives, and that managers should have a more representative role. And the top executive was the CEO, whom he kicked out, who was Rosic, who had applied tremendous cost containment, and put Nacho Mestre in his place, who was short-lived, and changed him to Oscar Grau (former handball player), who had no experience and was not a brilliant negotiator and, rather than containing expenses, he worried about increase income and spared no expense, and as sports director, the second most important position, put Andoni Zubizarreta (former international goalkeeper), whom he kicked out, Robert Fernández, whom he kicked out, Pep Segura, whom he kicked out, Eric Abidal, whom he kicked out, and Ramón Planes, who left when Laporta became president. In six years, five different sports directors. So Bartomeu's speech doesn't hold up. However, he argued that the only way to maintain a squad was to win the European Cup and one of his objectives was to win the European competition in all sections in the same year: football, basketball, handball, roller hockey and women's football.

-That is, everything that Bartomeu studied at the time, he could not apply...

-I think the problem is that Bartomeu is not a leader and that he does not have a great command of the media scene either because if you know how to sell your speech you make yourself more credible. And he surrounded himself with many executives such as Jaume Masferrer who intoxicated some of the club's departments. It is also true that in the world of football you can do everything wrong and that everything goes well or do everything right and that it goes wrong. I remember a person who was in the economic department of the club, who left because he said “I don't understand football, because I'm used to two plus two being four”, because of different things, up to the pressure of your own fans that asks you to hire although you see that they are not viable but you think that in two years there are elections and you end up signing a player and the salary mass skyrockets.

-Speaking of pressure, there is another very interesting factor. How much is Real Madrid's influence over Barcelona and vice versa?

-Barcelona and Real Madrid are communicating vessels. The fact that Madrid wins generates more urgencies in Barça and vice versa. They compete for hires, as is now for (Kylian) Mbappe and (Erling) Haaland or for Neymar, in which in the end Barcelona won the battle against Real Madrid and that generated that from there Florentino Pérez gave the order to bet on any Brazilian who stood out and that is why they signed Rodrygo and Vinicius Jr, two players in the same position, because they were both about to sign for Barcelona.

-There is one oddity and that is that in the middle of Barcelona's golden cycle, with Lionel Messi, he won four Champions League, but Real Madrid also won many.

-I think that if we had done things right, Barcelona could have won six Champions League. I think Messi's time was wasted. There were times when despite the elimination, the public applauded standing up for what the team gave, as against Chelsea in 2012, but what cannot be these last goals while the club was spending the money in Coutinho or Dembélé.

-You guys talk about it in the book. That seems to have been the last big moment to build a team, when Barcelona received 222 million euros from PSG for Neymar.

- It is perhaps the best economic operation of Barcelona in history, because it gave a net profit of 180 million euros. The problem is how that money was spent. There are mistakes that are historical, such as signing Dembelé and not Mbappé, although he wanted to go to PSG because he is from Paris, but Barcelona didn't even try it when the president of Monaco preferred to sell it abroad so as not to feed the local competition. Between Barcelona and Real Madrid, Mbappé preferred Real Madrid, but since Bale, Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo were there and Neymar had left in Barcelona, he had a better chance of playing as a starter for Barcelona. And Barcelona didn't start signing him because he preferred a band player. These are mistakes that mark a decade. With that money, it was possible to build a team and regenerate the departure of Iniesta, Xavi or Neymar and the wrong substitutes were chosen.

-This was a serious mistake...

-That's the leadership. Laporta saved a motion of censure in 2008 because they did not get two thirds of the votes to remove him and that year Josep Guardiola arrived and ended up winning everything. And there he was saved by the decision to put Guardiola as a coach. Otherwise, his term of office ended fatally. And he ended up being a deputy. And Rosell, who spent two years in prison, will run as a candidate for mayor of the city of Barcelona in the 2023 elections. And if Bartomeu didn't win the “Triplete” in 2015, in the elections he came out last. And those elections were brought forward by the crisis of January 2015 precisely because in Anoeta, where Barcelona played against Real Sociedad, there was a conflict between Luis Enrique and some players such as Messi or Neymar, who went to the bench, and elections were called to calm the waters and that season they won the triplet.

-Maybe, as with Neymar's 222 million euros in 2017, wouldn't it have been better to sell Messi's pass, who wanted to leave, to prevent him from going away in free condition, and with that money to arm another competitive team, which he has to do it right now?

-As far as I understand it, there was no offer for Messi. Messi wanted to leave but for free in 2020. Manchester City didn't come with 200 million. And that's because Messi collects a lot of money and then it's hard to pay for the transfer (with a $700 million termination clause) and also, Messi's contract. And then came the whole burofax mess in which Messi was right, because although he had to warn that he wanted to leave before 10 June 2020 because of the clause of the contract with Barcelona, as it was an atypical season due to COVID-19, it ended in August. Messi embraced the spirit of the clause and waited for the season to end (when it usually ends in May) and Bartomeu embraced literality and as Justice is slow, no club was going to risk signing him when afterwards the player might have to return to Barcelona. Even Bartomeu wanted to include in this clause that Messi could only go to a minor league — there was already talk of going to Inter Miami — as was done with Iniesta or Xavi, but his father didn't want there to be any restrictions.

- What does Messi end up being for Barcelona, now that he's gone?

- I thought it would be a lot more traumatic. It was very traumatic when he left in August, but in the first year, although Barcelona played very badly, it is not a topic that has been in everyday life. Messi's name is not remembered when these defeats come, such as the recent elimination of the Europa League. A little because of the day to day that swallows everything and because people see that Messi is no longer so decisive in PSG and he didn't win the Champions League there either and he makes a lot of money. I think if you talk to Messi now, I'd say there are things he did that would make them different now. Also when you are on a site there are negative dynamics, problems with the president, you get caught up with some issues and you don't behave correctly. We didn't put it in the book but a person who lived with him told me that Messi recognized him one day, the phrase is textual, “I have a shitty character”, because they told him that he had to be more generous with his classmates, with the young people and he recognized that he had a difficult character.

-I was very struck by that phrase by his former Croatian colleague Iván Rakitic that you reproduce in the book, about Messi sending more than he seems and that, for example, when he wants a bottle to be removed from a place, he looks at the bottle, he looks at you and you already know what you have to do. That thing about sending without saying anything. Perhaps that is why, for many Argentines, Messi remains indecipherable.

Messi is indecipherable. It is not known what he thinks. Those who have treated him a lot tell you that he can't stand balls (suckers) and they also told us a phrase that when he does the cross, he doesn't take it away from you anymore. But we must understand that Messi's dimension is tremendous, he is the best player in history, and that for Barcelona, he was both the solution and the problem. The solution, because it covered many shortcomings, because it decided a lot of games, but it was also the problem because under its umbrella many vices were acquired and it conditioned the team very economically and football.

-In the book there are some very particular expressions of power and character that conditioned Barcelona a lot, such as when they wanted to bring the central scoreboard of the Real Sociedad Inigo Martínez, but they did not do so because Javier Mascherano held the same position and is a friend of Messi, although after a few months, Mascherano went to China.

-In fact, one of the reasons why Barcelona doesn't bet on Mbappé is because they thought he was a centre-forward and there was Luis Suárez, Messi's friend. In the book we tell an anecdote that is revealing, which was the renewal of the contract of Jordi Alba, another of Messi's friends. The one who was Messi's right-hand man in the locker room (he is still with him today at PSG), Pepe Costa, after a match in which Bartomeu is coming down from the stage, cries out “You have to renew Jordi Alba that you can't leave” when the sports management had put a limit on his salary and the next day, Bartomeu paid his representatives what the board of directors did not want to pay them.

-Also very interesting about Pepe Costa, a kind of bodyguard...

Yes, a Messi employee paid by the club. So you say it's a privilege? Yes. Is it normal for the best player in history? I think too. It's normal that you don't treat Messi like everyone else. The problem comes when you don't treat Messi like everyone else and you don't win the Champions League. We also say it in the book, from a person who tells us that “the problem is not Messi but those who think they are Messi”. There were five six players around Messi who ended up having excessive power in the dressing room, including Suárez, Alba, Gerard Pique at the time.

Infobae

- It's bad with Pique now, isn't it?

We say it in the book, that now Messi may hate Pique more than Bartomeu. They played together in youth football, but there are details such as Pique lowered his salary when Messi already left, and he doesn't lower it before. That could mean betrayal for Messi. In fact, Laporta thought it would be easier for several players to lower their salary to be able to pay Messi and it wasn't like that, although it's normal, why am I going to lower my salary so that you give it to him? When Bartomeu leaves, Pique is the first to lower his salary behind the rest of his teammates and that causes quite a lot of tension, for example, with Messi. We tell in the book that one day Pique arrives in the dressing room and the word “Judas” is found on the blackboard. It is also possible that Messi and Pique get along like this because they are stepping on hoses, because the Messi want to get involved in representation for some time. His brother Rodrigo is wearing Barcelona B players, negotiated the renewal of Ansu Fati's contract the second time, and Pique is associated with Arturo Canales, who is one who is now quite involved in the subject. Surely there is some conflict of interest there. The truth is that when Messi came to Barcelona the other day, he had dinner with Sergio Busquets and with Alba and Pique was not there.

-In that power that Messi has, his father also plays an important role.

- Yes, he has a reputation for being tough but I don't think that's bad either because in the end, he has to push and play “bad cop.” They called him “The Lone Ranger” when he came to the offices because it was silent. They have to be tough because they have to be approached by so many people. And it's so hard to know what interest they're approaching you by and if they want to be your friend for you or for interests, and they've had cases of people wanting to take advantage of them.

-At the presentation of the book, they flew over the possibility that Barcelona could end up being a public limited company if it continues along this path. Don't you believe in the hypothesis that Sandro Rosell and Bartomeu, the two presidents of the cycle in which the fall began, have specially assembled this deficit structure and then returned as part of an SA that takes over an indebted club?

-This theory exists among people who are opponents of Rosell and then they tell you that Joan Laporta (the current president of Barcelona) is not guilty but he is complicit because due to mismanagement there will be no other option in the club than to turn it into a public limited company. But of course, that's the conspiracy theory. It's hard for me to believe it 100% because in the end there is a very important detail, which is that Rosell has been in jail for two years and no matter how good the plan was, he couldn't execute it as planned because you don't rule as if you were on the street.

But as much as he was incommunicado, can't it be a group that manages everything?

It's just that in the end that group dispersed. The economic area was managed by Javier Faus, who was the economic vice-president and it appears in the book saying that he is not in favor of Barcelona becoming SA, and its director was Antonio Rosic and with the arrival of Bartomeu (he assumed when Rosell resigned in January 2014, who later arrested), the two left and he made his economic equipment, which is not the same as Rosell's. Rosell and Bartomeu have like-minded people, but the way they manage the club financially is different. Before, it was a fairly professional management and Rosell (president between 2010 and January 2014) took the part of the numbers much more rigidly, especially the expense part.

-Because what you can see is that both Bartomeu and Rosell are people of high level training, in a business school like ESADE and they are groups with many ambitions, and it is a time when, in the world, many clubs have become SA.

- Yes, and the protagonists are often reluctant to accept that Barcelona can be an SA because they are aware of the social exhaustion that this has, but when you talk off the record, you already notice that they think it is a possible solution, and it is true that many managers from Bartomeu and Rosell studied at ESADE, a great business school in Barcelona. Jaume Masferrer, who was Bartomeu's right-hand man, is known in the organization of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.

- Beyond these groups, what do you think will happen to Barcelona? Because it seems to be on a path of fatalism with huge debts, mistrust of creditors such as the Goldman Sachs bank, which is increasingly being asked for money for the “Espai Barça” project to build an impressive complex that includes the refurbishment of the Camp Nou, the disintegration of a team that was a model in the world and won all the titles...

- The club has created a company to operate its businesses called BLM (“Barça Licensing & Merchandaising”) and wants to sell a part of this company. And he has created another one, called “Barça Studios”, to exploit its audiovisual and other rights and also wants to sell part of it. So somehow he wants to sell a part of it already. In a way that is already selling part of its properties, because it is a “Barça” branded company that in a percentage goes to other external companies. They are in that search, but it is also true that for now they have not specified anything and it is costing them. It's been eight or nine months and they haven't sold anything.

- In other words, following that path, Barcelona tries to privatize these areas or parts of them, but if it does not succeed... Because its leaders are also losing credit as their actions do not generate dividends and they do not advance. You say that Laporta, the current president, had had the illusion of renewing Messi's contract but when he went to ask for help and showed the numbers, the companies backed out... As it is today, can the situation in Barcelona be solved by the club's current administration?

- I think that's what we're saying. Either part of these companies is sold that generated or there will be losses again. Either it sells 49 percent, which is what it wants to do, to keep most of these assets before the end of the season (30 June) or for the third consecutive year Barcelona will close the fiscal year with losses. For example, the current budget for the 2021/22 season provides for the sale of 49 percent of “Barça Estudios”.

- Of course, the point is if you can't sell them. We're two months away from the end of the season. Because as you said in the presentation, one day Goldman Sachs will come, who lent him money, and he is going to say “well, I want my money or I keep so much percentage of the club”.

-In fact, although the negotiation with Goldman Sachs is about to fall because he does not trust Barcelona's numbers, in the previous pre-agreement that Bartomeu's board of directors had with Goldman Sachs to finance “Espai Barça”, one of the clauses that existed was that if in one season Barcelona could not return the stipulated money, Goldman Sachs would send a person to control that money being returned, to find ways to make more money, but to control the club.

-That is, something like what the IMF does in Argentina and other countries...

Yes, Bartomeu and his people said that he was a person who came to give solutions but at the end of the day they were people outside the club, who are controlling the club and who are in charge, and that he has a lot of power because you depend on his money.

I remember a phrase by Johan Cruyff, although he said it when Qatar Airways began to announce on the Barcelona shirt that it would go from being “More than a club” to “One more club”, as a protest, and resigned from the honorary presidency at the time of Rosell.

-I think that the “More than a club” has two aspects. One, related to the political issue: Barcelona as a representative of Catalan sentiment during the Franco regime, and this could be maintained even if it became SA, because it depends more on the sentiment of its fans. I think that then that feeling will last, whether it is SA or a non-profit association. It was also “More than a club” because of things like joining UNICEF or having been one of the clubs that took the longest to have advertising on the shirt, but the moment your sponsor becomes Qatar, you join an American investment fund to remodel the stadium, those values, in that sense, lose the essence of “More than a club”. At the moment in Spain, only civil non-profit associations are Barcelona, Real Madrid, Osasuna, Athletic Bilbao, and now Amorebieta, from the Basque Country, has risen to Segunda. So there are five exceptions in 42 professional teams between First and Second Division. It is clear that if one day Barcelona stops being so, part of the “More than a club” will be lost.

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