For now.

Saturday, July 18th, 2015. A very sad day in my life, and one that is not mine alone.

It’s hard to put this onto paper, as it will initially feel more like a death certificate than a heartfelt resignation to my beloved football club’s future. It’s obvious that no football fan wants to read why his club’s long term future is bleak and filled with hopelessness.

It’s not everyday that you can find a written piece like this from a passionate fan that carries the conviction that the one of the biggest football clubs in the world, one that you have dedicated part of your life, lost most of its values and what made it so unique.

If you are here to read the optimistic part, jump to “The Good Part”. If you hate me, Barcelona or are simply a Real Madrid fan, I suggest you jump to the “Present Woes and Predictions”.

What Barcelona means to me

My entire family always hated football so there wasn't any doubt that I would too, right?

No matter what you do, football is part of our lives in Brazil. Calling it “the country of football” was stupid at the time and it still is, but the game is ever present in minor conversations, jokes and debates.

As a child I didn’t understand what was appealing about any sport — it lacked meaning, but football was always there. I knew about Casillas and he wasn’t even 20 years old, I still don’t know how I knew about Iker before even discovering Barcelona through Rivaldo and the stories about Romário dribbling Alkorta.

The Brazilians Rivaldo was playing at the Camp Nou, and Romário before him, so Barcelona was present in my life in ways that I was yet to comprehend. I don’t know precisely when I discovered that Futbol Club Barcelona was Catalonia itself, and finally, I had found some meaning to what was at the time just another meaningless sport. Saying exactly when I started supporting Barça is difficult, but trophies weren’t the reason or part of the present reality.

Gaspart was at the helm, the club was going through its worst trophy drought in a while and Rivaldo scored that hattrick vs Valencia. The passion for the Brazil national team during and after the 2002 World Cup made me realize the feelings football brought to the fans.

Then finally, Ronaldinho was at Barcelona, turning me into a “real” Barça fan, whatever that means, but it’s certainly more than being a club member, living in Spain and not voting in the elections. I started to understand the club’s politics, its beautiful history, its meaning to the Catalan people, the rivalry with Real Madrid and I knew I had found something special. The Mighty Magyars losing the World Cup in 1954, and Cruyff being runner-up in ’74 were unfair, but their legacy lived on. Maybe. It all came together, somewhat, at Barça. La Masia’s importance, the model and the belief in the philosophy, that different way of looking at football, gave the club something that no other club could. “Més que un club” was born from things like this.

I have always been idealistic toward respect and having values, a quality that set me up to fall on my face more than once. I understood that the morals and respect that would always be vital to me, didn’t really apply to most people except for the sake of appearances.

It’s a bad way of looking at humanity as a whole? Certainly, but if you had gone through half of what I experienced you would understand. Still, I uphold those values until today and I will die with them.

Futbol Club Barcelona though, was different. The institution had many flaws, but the club represented real ideals and values, in its history and its present. I found a place in football where real beliefs existed, even if some of the people that once presided over it didn’t embody those beliefs.

That feeling was reinforced by the fact that the club was present in every difficult period of my life. The amount of support it brought me was incomparable with anything I had ever experienced. I always had good friends and a good family but this was special, giving the impression that with all of its flaws, the core goodness was untouched by the blight of life’s ups and downs. I always felt deeply grateful for that, and hope that Grup 14 is just the beginning of my efforts to repaying that, someday.

Barça became an ideal of sorts. The amazing work by Laporta, his board, was a natural evolution, making it even more meaningful. Having Unicef on the shirt was another reason to be proud. Normally when you wear your football club shirt you feel proud of it, but not of the sponsor, and Barça broke the mold once again. Then came Guardiola, who I consider the embodiment of the Catalan and club values, and finally La Masia, that after occasionally giving the first team important players, became the platform in which the team surpassed any other in the history of football.

Winning that league after such a long time still gives the impression that it never happened. The same can be said about Belletti’s goal, Messi, Xavi, the first treble and that legendary “Fuck you Fàbregas!” tweet after Rakitic scored in Berlin. It’s been a few good years on the pitch, but it was all a consequence of the good work done outside it, not the other way around as most think.

It all feels like a dream, and I think it will eventually be over. Not like the usual cycles in football, but actually over as regards what Barcelona represents. The club will keep on winning but without its identity those successes will feel empty.

The Good Part

I will never stop supporting this club, ever, and I will always celebrate when my team scores a goal, wins a trophy or makes a great signing. That’s about being grateful, and knowing that the Barcelona of old is there, somewhere. These people will pass and a new dawn will come for the club, but there is also the part of me that knows the club will be greatly damaged and it could never recover if the right successors aren’t chosen.

First of all, let’s be optimistic about the on-pitch results over the next three years. The team is as strong as ever, comfortably the best in Europe. Vidal and Turan are fantastic additions, Neymar is improving, Suárez is one absolutely tireless beast, Busquets continues to be a genius, Piqué leads the back line, and Messi is Messi, the greatest of all time.

I am sure we will celebrate many more trophies in the upcoming years, and I will enjoy every single one of them. I don’t like Luis Enrique half as much as Guardiola (that to be fair would be impossible), but he’s proven me dead wrong, learned from his mistakes, showed that he has a lot more than just character and balls. His coaching staff is made up of amazing people and although he backtracked to discreetly support Bartomeu, he has earned my deepest respect and admiration. We have a Cruyffista coach at the club, protecting what he can until the time to rebuild comes. I don’t know if he will last until this new presidential term is (probably prematurely) over, but I trust him to do his best until his departure. Don’t forget he has a deep hatred for certain media outlets in Spain, a man like that can’t be bad.

I say the same for most of the key players, although it wouldn’t surprise me to see Messi leaving sooner rather than later (he was closer to leaving in January than most think), so let’s enjoy the last greatest years of his career, preferably without making him depart through the back door or disgraced.

When we won the treble, I focused on celebrating the players, not the trophies. The amount of hard work and heart they gave us last season was admirable, one of the best seasons not only in the club history, but in the entire history of the sport. I wanted the treble for Suárez, Messi, Rakitic, Piqué, every single one of them, even Douglas! For the jokes, he became a way to relieve our frustrations, not the hero we want, but the hero we need, a Banter Knight.

There’s hope regarding Samper in the first team, he would make us forget about obsessing over Verratti soon enough. Most of you have no idea how good he is. Like Xavi was once compared to Guardiola as a player and later surpassed him, the ceiling for Samper is high, but he can certainly become our best midfielder (if Messi continues as a forward for the next few years). And the ascension of Seung-Woo Lee, who will most certainly make it to the first team in part because of his marketing value for the Asian markets, will surely be world class if given the chance.

The money from Qatar (€60–70m) will help the club increase its financial might and effect on the market to keep challenging the Premier League money while the English clubs fight among themselves to see who spends the most stupid amount of money in a 15-year-old England international or something like that. Real Madrid, Manchester United and Bayern Munich will be our main challengers in the Champions League. And the good news is that with Pérez continuing to act like a mentally impaired dictator at Real Madrid, the chances that we will win the majority of league titles in the coming years is quite good minus the usual robbery, as in 2012. That only changes if Mourinho returns to the capital sooner rather than later.

The Elections

I never considered me a “Laportista”, he has many flaws, questionable deals and decisions, but at least he knew how to save the club from itself. Saying that Laporta was an exception and that Barcelona is back to its status quo of the Nuñismo, being victim of a morally questionable administration is something that most fans, especially some that consider themselves “enlightened”, are constantly using now that Bartomeu (Rosell) is elected for another six years. But most don’t understand that the work done, albeit slowly, was the culmination of the seeds planted by Cruyff the moment he returned as a coach to the club. Barça was being built for this moment, and now it will regress to the worst of Núñez days, the only difference being Messi and that modern football players would never cause a Vesperia episode. I wish…

I didn't support Joan Laporta on the elections, far from it. His campaign wasn't convincing, he just promised Pogba, a player that doesn't have half of the appeal that Beckham once did — Beckham wasn't even meant to be signed. The player's agent authorized Laporta to use the Englishman's name if he signed Rustu, he did after being elected president. Questionable but won him the elections at 2003 and saved the club from utter ruin, at the time Barça was below Newcastle in terms of revenue — Laporta based his entire 2015 campaign on Cruyff, La Masia and Unicef over and over again, not exactly effective. Laporta and his team didn't do anything illegal like it was many implied, utter rubbish.

Laporta's mistakes with Uzbekistan were highlighted by media outlets and social media, while many ungrateful people suddenly forgot his and Cruyff's importance into making what Barcelona is today. Especially when it comes to those that hate Johan, these people are scum and I don't believe them to be culés. There's a big difference between despising the Dutchman that revolutionized Barça and disagreeing with him. Unfortunately many fans don't know that, I like to stay away from them.

Meanwhile the other side was rumored to recruit big foreign accounts on Twitter were even paid to support Bartomeu's campaign… One of these accounts was quite obvious, I'll leave it to your imagination.

Benedito was the best option on this elections, he was open and clear about his ideas, wanted Verratti and understood what Barcelona needed, but he was a victim of Laporta's candidacy and Bartomeu having the backing from Grupo Godó. It's a real shame, doubt he will ever challenge again.

My hopes for 2021 are Victor Font, a Catalan businessman. I had the pleasure of meeting him before the elections. He has clear ideas for the club, knows that it will falter if it continues like this and is surprisingly modern thinking for the present Barcelona politics.

The Present Woes and Predictions

Now that Josep Maria Bartomeu has been elected as Barcelona president and he will be responsible for the next for the next six years, reality has sunk its teeth into the club, and won’t let go anytime soon.

Qatar. Fraud. Corruption. Collusion. Traffic Sports. Manipulation. Propaganda. Lies. Hatred. Grupo Godó. The transfer embargo. The mismanagement of La Masia. The lack of protection to the institution and its main assets. The resentment towards those that really made the club what it is today. The perversion of the values that made the football club unique. The loss of the club’s importance to the Catalan society and its independence movement.

I have a message for those that read this piece and think that I'm a young fan that doesn't understand what is a really bad period in Barcelona's history.

Modern football is strikingly different from the time where Athletic Bilbao could win La Liga because they had a good team and coach. Barça is one of the biggest, richer and famous clubs in the world. Football has evolved and so should your thinking of how football works nowadays. Barcelona is at a crucial point on its history where it will define itself among the top 5 clubs in the world or fall behind to become a club like Liverpool, trapped in its past due to persisiting incompetence.

I don't want to see Barcelona fall behind because Manchester City and PSG made the right choices and we didn't. No matter how idealistic we can be, money will dictate the future of our club if we can't make it our own, and right now we aren't.

I ask you, really, what’s left of the meaningful things that make Futbol Club Barcelona different from Real Madrid or any other club?

Let’s start with Barcelona’s image. “Més que un club” has become a joke, a poor slogan that now feels more like a mockery of what the club used to represent and its imagined bright future. Now an ugly reminder of what it was, what it is, and what it will become. You might disagree with everything else that I said on this article, but please have the maturity to admit this slogan is just cheap marketing at this point.

Qatar Airways is one of the companies with the worst work conditions in the world. The International Traders Union was begging Barcelona presidential candidates to drop the sponsorship. Qatar Airways’ mistreatment of women is one of their marquee “qualities” that is certain to generate even more bad press, but maybe that’s not possible at this point.

Meanwhile we are known as the club that broke FIFA youth rules, and it’s not uncommon to see what should be well-informed people claim that Barcelona is getting punished for child trafficking. Meanwhile, the tax fraud and corruption accusations, inquiries and trials have become so common at the club that Real Madrid’s media team has enough ammunition for a few years to make dozens of strategic releases of new developments on these cases. That’s making their lives easier when they try to destabilize the club and its players.

The usual rival fans’ hatred for Barça and its “diving, embellishing, referee crowding players” is a good sign of on-pitch success though.

Barcelona is a political club, its meaning is deeply entrenched with politics throughout its history. Wanting to separate things is naïve, ignorant and disrespectful of its history. And this board doesn’t care about Catalonia’s independence at all. The Senyera kit is made to sell, not represent the patriotic pride Catalans feel in the region. The political involvement of Barça only brings trouble to a bunch of lazy people who are more worried that Qatar will lose the 2022 World Cup rather than if the Catalan people will be able to achieve secession at some point.

Worst of all? There are people inside the club and this board who despise the independentists, those that rightfully carry a feeling of patriotism wanting to free themselves from the claws of Spain’s economic exploitation and prejudice.

It’s hard to say where should I start with La Masia. We haven't seen a player establish himself in the first team since Pedro and Busquets. Deulofeu was the biggest talent since Messi, and was thrown into the trash before the managing committee decided to make one last push to increase income by selling him to Everton for €6m. Barça would rather buy some dubious Brazilian prospects than believe in their own youth products.

The continued use of La Masia like Chelsea does with their youth teams — sign bright prospects, make shortcuts on their developments, produce half-baked youngsters and sell them for a few million profit so the next half a season functional midfielder can be signed — is a worry.

In a few years, give or take, we will have fewer than a half-dozen actual La Masia players making the difference in the first team. I’m obviously excluding the Munirs and Sandros who will be used at the beginning of the season so Jordi Roura (God help us all) can say that many players are reaching the first team.

Qatar is a fiendish state and we are selling our club to it, bit by bit while it destroys us little by little. Let’s get this out of the way, disapproving of Qatar sponsoring Barcelona isn’t about hating people born in Middle East, its culture, traditions and religions. Qatar bought the World Cup, they are using and treatment workers like slaves and continue to try to buy its way into football. These are some of the issues, Google it if you want to discover dozens more.

PSG bought Karabatic from us, the best Handball player ever, shortly after the team had finally achieved European glory, and the “Parisian Club” is also signing some of our valued youth coaches and staff members. But you probably won’t hear more of it aside from a tweet from a Mundo Deportivo goon whining because he envies the money they will earn. They will probably be called traitors like Thiago, just another victim of the management…

There are rumors, ever present, that Qatar Camp Nou will inevitably happen, and we will have to endure this disgusting name for a decade or more. Here’s hoping most fans and media keep referring to it as “Nou Camp,” which is wrong but better than anything with Qatar.

Qatar will continue with dozens of construction projects of stadiums with thousands of slaves, and when eventually there’s (more) undeniable proof that they finance terrorism we can expect Jordi Mestre or some other Sandro Rosell half-breed to declare that “Yes, they are funding ISIS but we need to keep the contract for financial reasons”.

The end game is supposedly rumored to be the conversion of Barcelona into a company and its acquisition by the Qatari state, that is arguably the only thing that could make me stop supporting and hate my own club, but the way some culés are they will probably say it’s a good thing as the club needs more money to compete with Real Madrid.

Here’s hoping Qatar loses the 2022 World Cup, will be a glorious day.

Espai Barça. If it really happens it will certainly cost the club well over €600 million, and if it’s mismanaged as everything else these people have done at the club, we will have a repeat of the Luis Suárez (Spaniard) sale to finish paying the construction costs of the Camp Nou, which happened in the 1960s. Then finally the younger Barça fans and members will understand what Barcelona really needing money is.

Neymar Case. It will end up in nothing. The case was moved to Barcelona and eventually it will disappear, but the damage to the club’s image will stay. Hoping that Bartomeu or any other will end up in jail is a pipe dream, much like expecting the club to not suffer the, not merely economical, consequences of the mistakes in the Neymar signing for years. The rest of the legal troubles will lead to more millionaire legal fees and compensation.

Neymar is a good kid and didn’t deserve this, I feel sorry for him.

Club Protection. As you know, the club continues to be constantly attacked by certain national and international media outlets, and don’t expect the board to ever defend the club from such cowardly attacks. Barcelona was previously accused of doping, and they settled the lawsuit in less than a million euros instead of making Cadena COPE bankrupt. I ask you to please remember that every time an idiot on social media says that Barça wins everything because of Dr. Fuentes.

The damage is done and the attacks will continue. More than the club, player and staff families will suffer. Or do you think that every time Messi’s father is accused of money laundering to drug cartels in South America the greatest of all doesn’t suffer?

Economy. According to Deloitte, an actual source that we can trust when it comes to the economic aspects of football clubs, the economical growth of Barcelona has stagnated for the past 3 years. Meanwhile Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester United will are widening the gap between us and them while PSG, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal are getting closer.

It will certainly be funny when a Barcelona fan says “we have two trebles” after an Arsenal fan says that their club brand and overall value is bigger than Barça’s.

But now that I just realized this, it won’t be funny at all.

Club Membership. The restrictive membership rules will continue to be enforced, so many of us international fans will die without becoming official Barça members. Make sure to remind that guy from the Faroe Islands who defends Bartomeu on Twitter. Closing down the membership and making it difficult to become a member is a strategy to be able to control and manipulate the majority of socios who are easily influenced by the corrupt part of the lying Catalan media.

FIFA, UEFA and the Spanish Federation. Our relations with these three organizations are in tatters. The FIFA transfer embargo was completely justified and it showed how they take the biggest football organization in the world as a joke, in this case it’s irrelevant if they are corrupt or not. The Golden Ball voting extension was even worse, still baffling that the club never said a word.

Refereeing in European and domestic matches continues to be atrocious, and you shouldn't expect them to change as long as Bartomeu is in charge. Remember that if Real Madrid wins the league this season with three dozens of questionable decisions by the officials.

Viva Penalty!

Propaganda. Grupo Godó has done so well on Bartomeu’s campaign that George Orwell would be not only proud, but would also demand that in the new edition of 1984 Santi Nolla gets a dedication.

Grupo Godó owns Mundo Deportivo, RAC1 and La Vanguardia, the most disgustingly manipulative force I have ever seen among media outlets. They are worse than the tech media (but not Gawker, that’s impossible). There’s not much to explain, you just need to know that Godó uses all means to ensure that its interests are protected above all. And here’s hoping Grupo Zeta finally goes bankrupt or gets sold to someone with dignity.

Laporta’s people previously mentioned that after getting elected in 2003, one of the first meetings they had was with Grupo Godó, which made certain demands in exchange for its support of him. The board didn’t comply and Laporta was so thoroughly smeared that people still believe he almost bankrupted Barcelona. It was ruled in court that Laporta actually left the club in a surplus.

You think this isn’t enough? Well, these people hate Guardiola, and even Louis van Gaal, a notorious enemy of the media in his time at Barça, has better press than Guardiola.

The Worst Case Scenario

What happens if the blight that continues to rot everything that made Barcelona different continues to spread until 2021, when someone just as bad gets elected or the damage done to the club is irreparable?

Futbol Club Barcelona gets completely sold to Qatar and becomes one of their disgusting, whitewashing powerhouses. Someday Barça could be as hated as FIFA.

The club has so badly stagnated financially that it will take decades to even think about recovering while Real Madrid continues to be strong (Pérez is awful but knows his shady economic deals).

Espai Barça gets completed and cripples the club economically for a decade.

Barcelona loses all of its meaning, and people see it as just another sellout club without any values but with money. Maybe that already happened?

Catalonia gets its independence, but Barcelona will be historically remembered as irrelevant to the movement in its key moments (as it is now).

Conclusion

I fucking love Futbol Club Barcelona, it’s unconditional but I will never stop speaking up against those that want to destroy it, or worse, as it’s happening now. Many culés see me as pessimistic, and I agree with that assessment, but now I have an article more than simply justifying it. You have my sincere thoughts and expectations.

The worst part of all half a decade or so from now? That I will be able to call many people idiots. And they will know I was right all along.

Here’s hoping I will be utterly crushed much like Luis Enrique did to me last season, I sincerely dream with that. But make no mistake, I will never forget what were the original goals of these people, especially Sandro Rosell. His dark hand continues to grab by club by its throat and he won’t let go anytime soon.

Long live the damned 25 thousand!

Read more about Barcelona's situation:

Why I won’t vote for Bartomeu

La Masia: Controversial Decisions, Negligence & Irresposibility

A compilation of all of the mistakes made by the Sandro Rosell and Bartomeu administration: Part One, Two, Three, Four and Five.

The Neymar Case Explained

The exploitation of Tito Vilanova, Barcelona's manager that passed away in 2014.