Bartomeu responsible for embarrassing Barcelona transfer window shambles

Barcelona have closed the transfer window by not signing or selling anybody in the last day — which is in fact good news as Bartomeu, his board and his very inefficient sporting directors could have harmed our club even further given their lack of planning and their inability to decide the direction they actually want to take the club in.

Although the last 24 hours did leave positive stories such as the loan of Munir to Alaves and Douglas to Benfica, the board’s inability to bring Phillip Coutinho after weeks of arguing ‘the deal is close’ in front of the media is embarrassing. As we have been explaining for weeks at The Barcelona Podcast, Liverpool were never open to selling Coutinho and, even if the reported €160 million price tag had been true, the sum was disproportionate to the player’s quality.


And then, of course, there is the desperate attempt to sign 29-year-old Angel Di Maria — yes, the ex-Real Madrid player who repeatedly shushed the Camp Nou and has been in clear decline for the last three seasons. Clearly, Barca improvising at the last minute and offering €25 million, then €35M, then €40M for Di Maria is ridiculous.

There’s no two ways about it: The club’s reputation has been tarnished in front of the watchful eye of millions and Socis have no option but to take action in order to regain control of their club — as, unfortunately, having any of those responsible for this mess resigning as a result is perhaps just wishful thinking.

As we spoke about in much more detail in Episode 29 of The Barcelona Podcast, Bartomeu and his board should have focused on looking for realistic targets rather than chasing shadows. Listen now:

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