'Real Madrid run Barcelona and Messi is a smokescreen!' claims Camp Nou insider

Tom Weber

• 1 May 2023 10:03 BST
• 3 min read

A former member of Barcelona's Espai Barça commission has made some explosive claims about the club leadership.

Despite the Blaugrana's dire financial situation, the club are keen to press on with their ambitious projects, including the re-signing of Lionel Messi and the massive Espai Barça scheme that will not only change the face of the club but of all of Barcelona.

The latter will see wholesale renovations of the Camp Nou and surrounding facilities, with the club recently securing a deal worth €1.5 billion with some 20 investors to finance the project.

Even if the Espai Barça project goes ahead, this still will not have fixed Barcelona's Financial Fair Play issues. On the contrary, president Joan Laporta and the rest of the club hierarchy have been desperately negotiating with LaLiga in recent weeks in hopes of finding a workaround that would allow the Blaugrana to bring in new players.

READ: Messi’s Barca return IMPOSSIBLE as Laporta fails to answer to key question

Recent reports out of Spain claim that these negotiations have not come to a positive conclusion for Barcelona, with the club still a long way off from having a workable solution to reduce their spending by €200 million. This has put a Lionel Messi return in doubt, but one insider claims that this transfer saga was a ruse all along.

What has been said?

Economist and former member of the commission overseeing the Espai Barça project Jaume Llopis claims that Real Madrid chief Florentino Perez is actually running Barcelona.

Speaking to the Goles podcast, Llopis said: "What Barça's board did is illegal. They approved a €1.5B loan for the whole project, not just the stadium...the first thing they should do is block Laporta's credit card. It is the best they can do for this time of austerity. The one who really runs Barcelona is Florentino Perez."

READ: Barcelona OUT of the race to sign Brazilian wonderkid

"[Barcelona] have mortgaged the most important rights. They will have a debt of 3,000 and 4,000 million euros; that is something impossible to return. The move to a Public Limited Company is irreversible."

According to Llopis, who resigned from the Camp Nou renovations project in 2021 ostensibly because the costs will run much higher than initially predicted, asserts that the Messi saga is "one more [financial] lever." The Argentine "will not come," he said, it is "another smokescreen to cover up the club's problems."