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Exit strategy: Barcelona's president Sandro Rosell. Manu Fernandez/AP/Press Association Images
Political Football

Barcelona chief Sandro Rosell on brink of dramatic exit as club call EGM

The club president is under the spotlight over the Neymar transfer.

BARCELONA ANNOUNCED AN extraordinary board meeting today amid reports that president Sandro Rosell may be poised to resign.

“Today, Thursday January 23, at 18:00, there will be an extraordinary board meeting at the club offices,” Barcelona said in a statement without elaborating.

Catalan sports daily Mundo Deportivo said in its online edition that Rosell had decided to resign and would announce his departure later in the day.

The paper, without giving a source, said Rosell would leave Barcelona in the hands of vice president Josep Maria Bartomeu until the end of his mandate in 2016.

Pressure mounted on Rosell after a Spanish judge agreed yesterday to hear a case made against him by one of the club’s own members for alleged misappropriation of funds in the deal which brought Brazilian star Neymar to the club last year.

Catalan daily La Vanguardia said in its paper edition that Rosell had not ruled out leaving his position so as to protect the club’s reputation during a possibly drawn-out legal proceedings, also without quoting a source.

Rosell has routinely insisted that the 21-year-old Neymar cost the club €57.1 million, but refused to divulge how much money each of the parties to the deal received on confidentiality grounds.

That led Barcelona member Jordi Cases to launch the case against Rosell last month for not informing the club’s members as €40m of the fee was supposedly paid to a business owned by Neymar and his father called N&N.

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