Toni
Ash He reviewed the news of the electoral campaign in an interview on Radio Marca. The candidate to the presidency of FC
Barcelona talked about all the topics of present, making it clear that he is convinced of the continuity of L
e
The
Messi, news almost every day for the campaign of PSG to try to sign him for free since his contract ends on June 30. To questions from the journalist Felix
Monclús, Ash He also spoke about the economic situation of the club, ensuring that the great fault of the crisis is the pandemic of coronavirus and that in social networks he sees a dirty war during the campaign against him. Here are the topics he touched on:
-Your recipe for debt relief: “The club’s situation is marked by a series of circumstances to be resolved, and we will do so with professionals. There are two scopes. Salaries, which must be adjusted and we will have the complicity of athletes. And the debt, which will have to sit down with the creditors and restructure the debt. Good news: Goldman Sachs already works with Barça and the creditors know that they will charge from Barça as the largest sports entity in the world, we are the European club that generates the most resources. My message is not so much one of catastrophism but that we have already met. In 2010 a syndicated loan of 150 million euros had to be requested and afterwards we have won two Champions ”.
-Which people will you count on: “We have the management model that Barça wants. We have experts, such as Lluís Carreras, who is important to come out and that the partners know how we will manage. What penalizes the club is poor sports management. There is the trade, the botigues … but the important thing is to manage the sporting issue well, hence the name Lluís Carreras ”.
-How many managers do you have: “We have 15 executives in our candidacy, some of whom are well known for living at Barça apart from being prestigious professionals. If we win, we can add six more managers. As much knowledge as possible is needed ”.
-What would change about the club’s management model: “I don’t think it’s so much about the management model but about having the most capable people. The board of directors model is the one that exists by law and the one that we maintain. It is necessary to change areas of sports management and have professionals who adjust the management to what the directive requests. We want to grow in turnover and income, but above all not to lose identity and know that the most important thing is the sports part. In recent years we have continually changed sports director. Barça is not a club for buying and selling players. This part of sports management. Now we have discovered Araujo and Mingueza because we have no money. Last year we discovered Ansu because Valverde calls a youth and surprises him. We win when we do things our way and for that we have Carreras ”.
We don’t need a savior. Sports management has been wrong in terms of signings, to extend contracts for too many years … but above all, Barça is unstoppable
-Your model: “In sport you cannot always consider winning as the only option. Barça must aspire to win most of the time, but when we lose we must not deviate from the idea, that we know why we lose and why we win. You have to be different from the others, that’s where the income will come from. Barça is not going to the market like Chelsea. And there must be responsible management. It is impossible to finish with Barça ”.
-What issues do you see embedded: “I think the main problem is the pandemic. Look at the equipment we have. When the Lisbon thing happened it seemed that the club had to be destroyed, the board could do nothing. It’s one thing for you to be angry, but you have to love Barça just the same. They are 121 years of history, it goes through complicated situations but it is always Barça. I went to a show and said that Koeman might be a good idea, when someone said it was a patch. We have Ansu, Mingueza, Araujo, Pedri, Ter Stegen, Messi … NOT bad. We don’t need a savior. Sports management has been wrong in signings, in extending contracts for too many years … but above all, Barça is unstoppable ”.
-Prepared not to win: “We are from a generation in which we loved Barça when they weren’t winning too much. In my childhood, from 5 to 16 years old, we did not win a League, from the Cruyff player League to that of Urruti in Pucela. But we had the same feeling for Barça and the players were our idols. And we were very excited about Basel in 79 and the Standard Liege Cup Winners’ Cup in 82. And we were perhaps more Catalans now. Lately we didn’t even value the League. It has been this toxic, perverse environment that he has wanted to underestimate because his own were not inside. How that the Barça does not excite? Barça is always excited ”.
-The statutes and if it is necessary to retouch them: “In general, you don’t have to touch them. We can assess the duration of mandates, perhaps six years is too much and we should go to four or five years. There is also the term limit of the president, that if you are finishing they can give you a pulse from the inside, as happened at the last meeting, or the institutions from outside can ignore you. And I would not be more than two terms, for the record. But the partner must decide and that it also depends on the drive that each president has, and the presidential institution must be short.
-If you ever consider being a Public Limited Company: “That is totally and absolutely non-negotiable because we do not want to and because we will manage responsibly, for example without issuing bonds, because if we cannot pay at the end they propose the SA as a solution. We will neither ask for spills nor will we increase quotas to solve the crisis ”.
-How you see the Laporta Bonds: “If they are transferable, they go to a secondary market, they are extremely dangerous. Many times it is said that to compete you must be a sports corporation. But if we have not been the most competitive club in the world! If you are not, you prevent external agents from entering, player agents, politics, which should never enter the club. You have to be sensitive to Catalan freedoms, but always independent ”.
I think Messi will never leave Barça. One day he will stop playing but he will never go away
-What has the last meeting done very well and what has done wrong: “The social mass of members and supporters have been very well served, the promotion of the foundation’s solidarity activities, and the promotion of women’s sport, with a soccer team of which we are very proud. Obstacles have also continued to be overcome at Espai Barça: the Johan Cruyff stadium, the demolition of the Mini, the permits for the general plan to build the Espai Barça … And I think Bartomeu has given a good image at the institutional level. And on a negative level, we have not been able to renew the team at a sporting level and I know that they recognize it. At Barça Corporate, e Sports are business lines that we must continue working on. We want to expand the women’s sections to all club sports. We also want to recover the Barcelona atmosphere that has been lost a bit. The board was lately to generate income and the culé atmosphere has been lost a bit, without letting ticketing be an important part of our management. There are 22,000 tickets that can be released and that we want to sell at a subscription price, to bring Barça closer to members who are not subscribers. We have met with all the animation groups of the stadium and the Palau ”.
Consultations with partners: “The telematic consultations is a good idea but fine tuning what to talk about, without much information is not the best idea.”
-The sections: “We want to promote and improve them in women’s sport. We do not lose money with the sections but we enhance our identity ”.
-The Barça Space: “It was a debate that began at the meeting I was in in 2012, so we have been thinking about it and processing it for nine years. So much work has been done that it makes me laugh that some candidate wants to do something else or take the stadium to another site. Barça needs a stadium, a Palau, a Palau 2 and we need to start the works as soon as the permits are available, before the summer I think. We must convey to the member that at the end of the 24-25 season we will have a new stadium ”.
-The future of Leo Messi: “What can be said about the best player in history, who esteems Barça and Catalonia. We have to make this story continue and I think he wants it too. I think we can give Barcelona fans great news, I see him very happy with his teammates, he is a world icon and we believe that he will continue. I have a feeling this wardrobe has been conjured up, with these epic comebacks. It is a very good moment and easily understood, I think. I think Messi will never leave Barça. One day he will stop playing but he will never leave, Messi’s history with Barça must be eternal. We must find the formula so that we all win. First the Barça and also him, it is necessary to have continuity ”.
-A tip for Messi: “I am nobody to give you advice, I would look into your eyes, I would ask you if you are happy, and if you say yes, we would have everything. My feeling is that it is. And he would convey the gratitude and pride of Barcelona to be able to count on him. It is a perfect symbiosis. He has shown that he is capable of being happy, after what happened in the summer. And be careful with this season, we can finish very happy ”.
-Lluís Carreras: “He is a phenomenon, I have known him for a long time, his character, he is intelligent and coincides one hundred percent in my way of understanding football. If we talk about Barça, you have to have someone who knows what Barça is and who believes in it, with very solid knowledge. And Carreras is very culé ”.
-Ronald Koeman: “He is the coach in whom we have trusted from the first moment that it was said that he could come and we celebrate that now everyone is on that line. You are adapting to what the club can offer you. He is a club man and understands what the club is. I like how it is explained, how it transmits, it has serenity with strength and authority ”.
-Eric Garcia: “It was on everyone’s lips because we had an opportunity to do something in the winter market and it was not done because there were different points of view among the candidates. He is a player that we consider, after talking to the coaches, that he is the center-back who should come and it would be good if we made sure of him because his contract ends on June 30. Hopefully it is.
-The thing you liked least about the rivals: “I respect them, we are different, but I would not want to speak ill of them and less publicly.”
–At the ethical level, how do you see the electoral campaign: “I detect a very dirty war in social networks, and you don’t know if it is driven by candidacies. I wouldn’t want to blame them for it. When we have had to share situations or decisions, and living with them, I have no complaints. But a frame of mind had been created that a candidate had already won and now people are realizing that this is not the case and I am happy about it. There is a very large group of undecided, in whom a scenario of two candidates has been drawn and now they see that there is a third. I hope that there will be discussions so that the partner can compare before choosing ”.
Ash He also went through the microphones of Radio Nacional de España. Before them he ironically assured that “from Real
Madrid I envy ‘their luck’ with the arbitrations ”. He was also asked about the sporting weight of three of the great icons in the history of Barça. Always speaking in sports terms, the leader of Fidels al Barça described to Johan
Cruyff as “the most influential personality”, to Pep
Guardiola as “the most successful” already Leo
Messi as “the coolest”.
