Barcelona presidential candidate Fonte: Laporta deceived us and mismanaged a team in crisis

Hupu News on October 19th Recently, Barcelona presidential candidate Fonte accepted an exclusive interview with Spain's "Daily Sports" and sharply criticized the management model of the club's current board of directors.

Why did you choose to speak out at this time before the member representative meeting?

In a club like Barcelona, ​​we don’t think the identity of “opposition” has much value. After all, we are all loyal fans of Barcelona. However, we feel it necessary to provide a version that complements the official statement. We don’t want to be the kind of naysayers who just talk the talk, but we will speak out at key moments, such as on the eve of the membership meeting, when financial reports are released, or when Harvey signed. Especially when the club's official statements are deceptive, it is particularly critical to expose these lies.

This membership meeting will be held online again

This is another sign that the connection between the club and its members is increasingly loose, and we are deeply saddened by this. This is simply a sign of incompetence on the part of management, which is what happens when they lack transparency, are unwilling to entertain any dissent, and are disorganized and full of deceit.

Last season's financial report is about to be submitted for approval. The regular business profit was 2 million euros, but after adding non-recurring business, the total loss reached 17 million euros.

This is a typical example of deception. Any management has its strengths and weaknesses, makes mistakes, and does things right. But deception will never be tolerated. Members do not know the true nature of the matter. The club announced that we ended the season with a loss of 17 million euros, but failed to tell us that the auditor's report from a year ago, combined with the loss in value of the Barcelona studio, had forced them to recalculate their accounts. They added an additional 90 million euros in losses to their balance sheet last season, and that financial report had actually been closed and approved long ago, and the loss shown at that time was still 90 million euros.

This is the last financial report during the term of the current board of directors.

When the current board of directors leaves office, the operating loss will exceed 1 billion euros. Yes, they took over in a terrible situation, with unreasonable contracts, late payments... but you've been running it for five years and you haven't been able to turn it around. Our expenses exceeded our income by 1 billion euros, and to make up for this shortfall we had to sell off assets. The problem is, the way we sell assets is terrible. We sold more than 800 million euros in assets, not to partners who would increase the value of the assets, but to people who did not pay, whose identities were unknown and whose reputations were questionable.

Barcelona Studio has always been a burden.

The problem still lies in deception. They tell you that the telecommunications contract was signed to New Era Visionary, which the club claims is an industry-leading company, but in fact it is a newly established company with offices in a shared space, managed by Ruslan Birladeanu, and almost no one knows about it. When we sold the rights to develop VIP seats in order to register Dani Olmo, we sold it to this company. Making mistakes is understandable, but cheating is never okay. There are many such examples. We paid 50 million euros to a friend of the chairman, saying it was to mediate the renewal of the contract with Nike. If we hired a professional mediation company, they would have to work for 25 years to earn 50 million euros. And ISL, the club supplier paid for the bank guarantee for the board members and we gave them the business.

Do you have any concerns about returning to Camp Nou?

All of our members are aware that this is a massive project and any project is subject to delays. But what is incomprehensible is the way you manage it. It was the club themselves who put the pressure on to get a "first occupancy permit" for only 27,000 spectators, and then the new general manager said it was unsustainable. Since you have 50,000 seats in Montjuic, how can you go back with only 27,000 people? Why not tell the truth?

The first team's performance is not bad, but you once said that Flick would definitely be shocked.

The cumulative operating loss reached 1 billion euros, and after the assets were sold off at a low price, the loss for the entire period was still 230 million euros. We are very worried about this because this kind of poor management and a governance style full of improper operations and deceit has two serious consequences: first, you put sports performance at risk, and second, unknowingly, they are changing the social model of the club.

Can you talk specifically about financial management issues?

Poor financial management has meant that we have not been able to recruit properly for five years. However, the chairman went to the club and told the members that we had restored the 1:1 signing rule and would sign Nico Williams. But poor financial management makes it impossible for you to achieve the 1:1 signing rule, so that you have to let go of team pillars like Inigo in vain, making it impossible for you to complete the signings you want. This is risking an era that should have won multiple Champions Leagues. We will have to find a successor for Lewandowski. If we had done our preparations, we could have signed Haaland or Alvarez.

You also mentioned the problem of the social model

Because after returning to Camp Nou, only 25,000 of the 45,000 seats belong to season ticket holders, and the rest are given to tourists. We have made budget cuts to other athletic departments year after year, which impacts the 6,000 Palau Arena season ticket holders. The travel department is in tatters, and many of our members love to go on expeditions. We have withdrawn our financial support to the supporters association. We destroyed the cheering stands. But we gave 50 million euros to a friend. They also quietly increased season ticket prices by 30%. Think about how much good could have been done for members with that commission given to Darren Dane.