Zubizarreta: “We have a winning squad”

Jordi Clos

The Sporting Director of Professional Football, Andoni Zubizarreta and the First Vice-President responsible for the Sports Area, Josep Maria Bartomeu, addressed a press conference at the Camp Nou on Wednesday on a wide range of footballing issues.

Now that the summer transfer window has closed, these two keys figures in the Club’s organigram spoke to reporters for an hour and a half on Wednesday. Some of the issues covered were the reorganization into professional football and youth football, areas headed up by Zubizarreta and Guillermo Amor respectively, the movement of players in and out and the contract renewals of the coaches and of Mali international Keita.

A balanced squad
“Barça always has a team that wants to win. Historically, that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it is now. The fact that the first team squad consists of 19 players isn’t important. We have plenty of cover because there are players in Barça B that could be in the first team. We’d had plenty of offers from the Spanish first division and from around Europe for them”.

“We have a balanced squad. We’ll keep on looking at what we have and at the market but there’s no pressure to bring players in from the reserves or in the winter transfer window”.

The reserves
“The objectives are to supply players for the first team and maintain their second division status. At their age, and in order to develop their game, we want them to play in the second division”.

Javier Mascherano
“We paid Liverpool 20 million euros plus the 4 million that came from the player by reducing his salary”.

Players on loan
The clubs that have taken the five Barça players on loan all have an option to make the move permanent. As regards the players’ salaries, Santos and Getafe have agreed to pay 100% (Keirrison and Victor Sanchez); Racing 85% (Henrique), Sevilla 90% (Martin Cáceres) and Birmingham City 75% (Hleb), depending on objectives.

No last-minute signings
“We have made no effort to sign a forward. Some were offered to us but we weren’t interested”.

Summer tours
“The new Board have drawn both positive and negative conclusions from the recent tour of Asia. We’ll continue with them but we’ll have another look at how we do them”.

Guardiola contract extension
“Guardiola knows that he can come and sign for another season whenever he likes. It’s too soon to talk about this”.

Cesc and Arsenal
“Both the Club and the player did as much as possible. Our second offer was 40 million euros. From the moment Arsenal said they didn’t want to negotiate we respected their position”.

“We would have liked to have signed him but we weren’t able to negotiate. It wasn’t a disappointment – it was simply impossible”.

“Thanks to the conversations we have re-established contact with Arsenal”.

5% reduction in squad salaries
“The total salaries of the squad have gone down by 5%. We weren’t looking for this but we wanted a competitive team”.

Alves contract negotiations
“We’re made an offer to Alves to extend his deal and soon we’ll negotiate. We want him to stay and this will be one of our objectives over the next three months”.