Barça captains disqualify Bartomeu

Piqué and Messi, before taking on Getafe.GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP

The policy of renewing contracts on an individual basis to lower the salary mass applied by the FC Barcelona board of directors has not diminished the collective complaint of the staff about the treatment given by the board chaired by Josep Maria Bartomeu.

The open gap, especially manifest when Messi expressed his desire to leave Barça, has grown more since the constitution last Monday the negotiating table to which the representative of the squad invited from Barça has not attended.

The captains of the first team - Messi, Piqué, Busquets and Sergi Roberto - and those of the subsidiary signed two protest burofaxes and a letter revealed by the newspaper

in which they described the performance of the Bartomeu board as "shameful and poor" .

The players warn that they will not tolerate their rights being violated "with the arguments made in the letter sent by the club."

They understand that the directive considers that the only way to achieve its objective is “through joint actions of all the groups and sections of the club, when at the same time they recognize, entering into a clear contradiction, that some of said groups and sections have already made the financial adjustments they want ”, reads the note from the Barça players.

The "malaise" and "deep disappointment" are terms used in the footballers' letter, who appeal to unity despite the interest of the board to atomize and divide the dressing room with the already signed renovations of Lenglet, De Jong, Ter Stegen and Piqué, one of the captains and therefore a signatory of the document sent to the Camp Nou offices.

There is evidence, according to information from

, that the board also tried to convince Messi, Busquets, Sergi Roberto, Alba, Coutinho and Dembélé to extend their contracts in exchange for reducing their current income, a proposal that all rejected, including Griezmann, also tempted at the beginning of the talks started by the Barça board.

The letter also specifies its position regarding the representativeness of the Works Council to defend the labor rights of the players: “We have not appeared in any census of union elections nor have we been voters, so the Works Council that exists in the club does not show our representation ”, specifies the document, which has reopened the discrepancies already noticed during the first salary cut - of the order of 70% of the salary - during the state of alarm when the players made explicit that they had made some contributions so that the employees of the club could collect 100% of your salary.

"It never ceases to amaze us that from within the club there were those who tried to put us under the microscope," said Messi at the time.

The continuity of the captain is precisely the most complicated and still not resolved because the contract ends on June 30 and last summer he already expressed his will to leave Barcelona due to discrepancies with President Bartomeu.

Now the board of directors is talking about a "temporary salary adjustment" (pay in the coming seasons what is saved in the present, a plan that will tax and condition the policy of the next meeting).

The negotiation table initially has until November 5 to close an agreement.

Previously, for days 1 and 2, the vote of no confidence is announced and on Monday the board will meet to evaluate the situation.