In Rosell We Trust?

Sandro Rosell’s era as FC Barcelona president has seen the club enjoy success on the pitch with domestic and international titles. However, Rosell has not been enjoying the same success off the pitch. His presidency has been clouded with controversial decisions that have finally reached a limit with certain club members. It seems that for some members, the time has come for Rosell to face the music with a censure motion to be served upon Rosell and three of FC Barcelona Vice-Presidents tomorrow.

Just to set the record straight, I have never been a fan of Sandro Rosell. I despised him the minute he stepped down as FC Barcelona Vice-President and published a tell all book to sully then President Joan Laporta and reveal dirt about the club such as their flirtation with firing Frank Rijkaard during his first season and replace him with Luiz Felipe Scolari and Rijkaard not wanting Ronaldinho to be signed. I wouldn't expect that from someone who loves the club. He sure didn’t look flattering in that BBC documentary “The Inside Story” where he came off a bit drunk with power along with acting as if he was the president at times while also coming off as a whiner  exhibiting the victim mentality that Barça fans were associated with in the past when he was complaining about referees robbing Barça. I never understood his comment that clubs run by president in a dictatorial manner was a successful approach since he complained that Laporta was doing the same thing after Rosell stepped down.

I was planning on writing this blog as part of the third and final chapter of my summer trilogy following “In La Masia We Trust?” and “In Tito We Trust?”. However, Tito’s unfortunate news of his cancer returning made me put off lambasting Rosell until now. In Rosell we trust? Based on the reaction of Blaugrana faithful inside the Camp Nou and on the social media, I guess not. Rosell promised a lot of things with transparency being one of the main promises. However, his presidency so far has been clouded with many deals that have not been transparent.

As much as the club has been successful on the pitch during Rosell’s presidency, his term has been very controversial. Some of the decisions that he made range from changing the rules in becoming a member, “Socio”, of the club to the Qatar Foundation sponsorship deal forced upon the club without members voting on it first. Some also blame him for Pep Guardiola walking away from the club while others complain that he has used his presidency for applying petty revenge against Laporta. The idea to allow a Madrid based media company to handle Barça TV turned out to be a bad idea when a video leaked Xavi’s off the record comments about Real Madrid which embarrased the player.

Furthermore, the club under his era has seen some awful decisions when it comes to players such as selling David Villa for peanuts while reneging on a promise to bring back Abidal and allowing him to leave which meant the club lost a positive and rallying influence in the clubhouse. By the way, Abidal has looked great for Monaco thus far. The Thiago fiasco that saw him join Bayern Munich because the lack of minutes for the young player resulted in his buyout clause to significantly decrease was also poorly handled. The way the youth setup is being run by bringing back Eusebio and not buying a centerback the past two seasons.

For a president, his actions have resulted in a lot of foot in mouth moments such as when he said the club would reduce spending by no longer allowing color printing and his poor responses to that poor excuse of an interview with TV3 when he was questioned about receiving payments from Brazilian friendlies. He also has enraged some of the fans with his decision to replace the Camp Nou with a new stadium proposal, lying about his ties with the Boixos Nois, allegedly contemplating suing a Socio for his tweets about his presidency, making excuses about Thiago’s buyout clause being misreported by the media, his lack of action against the media whenever Pep and the players were attacked but not when he was, lack of transparency about the Neymar transfer payments, and the list goes on and on.

Well, it seems that many have had enough of Sandro Rosell and his shady ways of running this club. The group “Go Barça” which consists of FC Barcelona Socios will bring a censure motion to against Rosell and Vice Presidents Jordi Cardoner, Josep María Bartomeu, Javier Faus, and Carles Vilarrubí. The people at Total Barça have a great story describing the reasons behind this action from “Go Barça”. It seems that the final straw was Rosell’s interview about the Brazilian friendlies payments controversy. So this action will be presented tomorrow which requires obtaining signatures from of 5% of the Socios which amounts to about 7,000 Socios. Of course, Rosell had already proposed changes to that measure by raising that percentage to 15%. It seems like he saw the writing on the wall but won’t have a chance to implement in time.

So brace yourselves fans; this is going to get ugly. Laporta-Cruyff fans versus Rosell fans and the mud-slinging and accusations will be tossed left and right. Pity that this could tarnish a great start by the club but sometimes the fans cannot accept or tolerate a presidency that is run on broken promises and lack of transparency. Rosell should know, he was allegedly one of the behind the scenes players in Laporta’s Censure Motion. Like the old saying goes, “What goes around, comes around” and it is Rosell’s turn to sit on the hot seat and see who jumps ship.