Tension grows at Barca as senior players do not support pay cut

If it were not because of the club's rules preventing him from standing for election again, Josep Maria Bartomeu would find it even more difficult to win another term as Barca president. The candidate to succeed him is being prepared, but the players will not make it easy for him at all. 

Quite the opposite. The senior players in the Barca dressing room are more than angry at the way this season has been handled by the upper echelons.

'AS' reports that the club are concerned at the silence from Messi, Busquets, Piqué and Sergi Roberto, the team capitans, to the proposal of players' salaries being cut by 30% during the state of emergency.

The media outlet confirms that all the club's sports team will have their wages cut by 70% and football, at the moment, is getting off lightly, as they will only lose 30%.

That is the amount Barcelona want to reduce the first team's salary by, but the group prefer to follow the AFE's (players union) proposal of 10%. With such high salaries like those at Barca, the players believe that 30% is too much. As a result, nobody has talked about potentially carrying out temporary redundancies.

A silence which makes the club feel uncomfortable and does nothing other than make the relationship between the board and the footballers more distant. This had already grown with the non-arrival of Neymar, the Abidal controversy and the social media gate.

Cases, like these, which make clear that the current players are not at all happy with the current leaders and they would not be against a change of leadership at the top. But of course, that will now be in 2021, but there is lots still to decide before then.