Barcelona president to meet Gerard Pique after defender claims board is behind critical articles in Catalan press

Blame game: Pique alluded to sabotage from senior figures within the club
AFP/Getty Images
Ben Hayward1 October 2019

Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu is set to meet Gerard Pique in the coming days after the defender's claim on Saturday that members of the board were behind a vicious newspaper editorial in the Catalan press.

Pique recently blamed Barca's busy pre-season tour for the team's slow start to the season and after Saturday's 2-0 win over Getafe, he alluded to sabotage from senior figures within the club.

"We have to be together. Not just the players, but the fans and the board," the centre-back said in the mixed zone at the Coliseum Alfonso Perez. "When someone doesn't want to get angry, there are no fights.

"We know the club, we know the newspapers that have close ties with the club. We know who writes the articles, even if they are signed by someone else."

The article in question is an editorial in Mundo Deportivo, the Barcelona-based sports paper considered as a mouthpiece for the board in recent times. Written by Xavier Bosch, it is entitled "How the Barca dressing room achieved all the power".

In the provocative piece, Bosch writes that the Barca players have had a growing influence at the Catalan club in recent seasons and lists a series of examples of how they have exerted their power at Camp Nou.

The text claims the players got their way when they were asked about a successor to Tito Vilanova; it says they told Gerardo Martino's fitness trainer that they were not prepared to do laps in training; that former technical secretary Pep Segura was snubbed for criticising Pique's form; and that an experienced and very popular centre-back had vetoed the arrival of Inigo Martinez.

It also says that the players have operations when it suits them (like Luis Suarez, who missed the Copa del Rey final) or not at all (in Samuel Umtiti's case); that the senior members of the squad use the media to influence transfers and adds that, yes, they wanted Neymar back; and that they were prepared for Ousmane Dembele to be discredited in order to make that happen, even if that meant them leaking stories to the press.

The information is extremely specific and clearly comes from within. And Pique has decided to speak up. "We have to keep the club united," he said on Saturday. "Otherwise we will cause each other harm."

In Pictures | Getafe vs Barcelona | 28/09/2019

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It is notable that captain Lionel Messi spoke recently to the other big Barcelona-based sports paper, Sport, and not Mundo Deportivo, in a rare interview in which the Argentine said he wanted "a winning project" at Barca and claimed he did not know if the Catalan club had done everything they could to bring back Neymar in the summer.

Amid a climate of tension and a possible power struggle at Camp Nou, Bartomeu is now seeking clear-the-air talks with Pique, who wants to be president of the club one day himself, and the matter is almost certain to be raised in Tuesday's pre-match press conference ahead of Barca's Champions League clash at home to Inter Milan the following day.

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