Barcelona presidential candidate Agustí Benedito gave an interview to Spanish web portal Terra.Are you in favour of keeping UNICEF on the shirt or do you plan to look for a sponsor?
For now, the UNICEF contract has three years left, but the club is entitled to stop putting it on the shirt after each year. In principle we are in favour of maintaining the agreements that have been reached with UNICEF. We see Barça as a demonstration of good citizenship and the club has the potential to transmit values. We want an active presence in the society, establishing networks with social organizations that allow us to transmit our values and what the Barça brand represents. Given that, a collaboration with UNICEF is possible. But we must do a lot more in this aspect.
Godall thinks it's possible to have a budget of 1.000 millions. Have you thought about it? Is it possible?
I think we have to talk about figures in a serious way. If we have revenues of 1.000 and expenses of 1.000... We have to look at his balance sheet and what he plans to do. I think there are a lot of areas in which we can make progress. I'm optimistic. We will improve the exploitation of those resources that are not optimized, like the vip boxes, the use of club assets, the contracts with Nike and with the companies that own the broadcasting rights, as well as move into markets that we didn't yet reach, like Asia and South America. I believe our revenues will grow in the coming years, but I don't want to put it into numbers. But as important as the revenues are the expenses. We must control as much as possible the spending of the club.
Guardiola has spoken highly of Txiki. Will you ask Pep if he wants to continue with him? If that's not the cause but Pep himself asks you for his continuity, what will you do? Keep in mind that Pep always speaks well of him.
With us in charge, he won't continue.
Even if Pep explicitly asks it?
We will talk with Pep and we'll show him our ideas. We look forward to explain him our wishes and our structure so we can finalize it and fill in the names together with him. Through those talks we want to redefine our structure and try to convince him to continue more than one year. We'll find a common ground.
Will this structure have a sports director?
We will continue with the position of sports director. And in all sections, because we believe those are models that have to be to strengthened and that have worked well to date.
Are you in favour of the continuity of the people responsible for each section? It may seem obvious, but to give an example, Rosell wanted to dismiss Frank three months after hving started a project.
Policies of renewals and abrupt changes are not good for the club. As a principle, we will maintain as far as possible the current ideas and projects.
Without mentioning any names, we refer to Cesc. Are you in favour of paying large sums of money for people who left Barca in a non-friendly way?
I think that in the structure we have, the decisions about the transfers should be made by the sports director and the coach and we will support whatever they decide.
But this is a structural decision. Today it's Cesc and tomorrow it can be Thiago.
We insist that these are sports decisions by the coach and the sports director. About Cesc, I can only say that there is a consensus that he's a player with a Barça profile. The price seems to be an important element. Piqué costed 6 millions and he came without any problem. If the price for Cesc is 10 or 15, I'm sure we all agree, even if there would be a policy of not bringing back former youth players. What is the limit? I think these are football decisions and I think we should rely on the sports director.
The squad is almost entirely renewed. Do you agree with that?
There are some decisions that have been influenced by the elections. If they think something may benefit them in the future, they are doing it. I'm reluctant to talk about football - I'll do it when I'm president - I can say in general that in the last weeks of a term, it's perhaps not appropriate to make some of the decisions that are being made and that could also be made in three months time. I think that Piqué would have signed anyway, being it now or in four months.
this was the second part of this interview. you can read the first part here and the third part here.
Read more:
Benedito: "The media already have their favourites"
Board of Benedito will have 15 directors
Benedito putting emphasis on financial transparency
