La Liga deny threatening Barcelona with relegation over bank guarantee
By Harry Symeou
La Liga have denied that they threatened to relegate Barcelona to the second tier of Spanish football if they put a new president in place prior to depositing the required €125m bank guarantee.
New club president Joan Laporta needed to receive the guarantee - 15% of his proposed budget - to pass on to La Liga. Once the league validates the guarantee, the incoming president is able to officially take over and this process is designed to protect the club from being run irresponsibly - something Barcelona fans knew all too much about under Josep Maria Bartomeu.
Laporta was victorious in the recent election but Toni Freixa, one of his rivals for the position and a lawyer by trade, claimed on Twitter that La Liga and specifically league president Javier Tebas threatened to relegate the club if the deposit wasn't made prior to the swearing-in of the election winner.
6) La resposta de @LaLiga, en concret de @Tebasjavier a Carles Tusquets no es va fer esperar: "si permitís la toma de posesión del nuevo presidente sin haber depositado el aval, bajaré al Barça a segunda división". Això és el que Carles Tusquets ens va explicar als 3 candidats.
— Toni Freixa (@tonifreixa) March 18, 2021
La Liga released a statement (via ESPN) following Freixa's accusation.
"The one contact made by La Liga [during that time] was with the legal services, who requested a legal report that was sent to the Electoral Board of FC Barcelona, in which there was no mention of the demotion to which Freixa refers to," the statement read.
"Finally, La Liga wants to remember that, in the event that the newly elected president of a club does not present the guarantee, it is only possible from a legal standpoint to repeat elections and never demotion."
Barcelona's domestic form has been much improved of late, with the Catalan giants just four points behind Diego Simeone's Atletico Madrid at the top of the table. El Clasico is just around the corner with the game scheduled for April 10, and with the new president now in place, fans of the club will be hoping the club can get back on the right path.