Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Guixa: "We want to help other Catalan clubs"

Barcelona presidential candidate Jaume Guixà gave an interview to Catalan local television station Teletaxi TV.


What has been the contribution of Laporta to the recent sporting successes of Barça?
Laporta should be congratulated for the courage he had when he promoted a coach of the third division to first team coach. But said that, it should be clear that Guardiola and his staff have been able to shield the players from the problems created by the board of directors. This board was the most voted in history in 2003, and will also go down in history for the Barça of the 6 Cups and for the 2-6 which I consider to be one more cup. But on the other hand, 16 directors resigned, four vice-presidents investigated by a security company, problems with two presidents of autonomous communities, one being the one of Extremadura, a member of the Barcelona fan club for a long time. All these clashes are unnecessary in my opinion and that is why I say that we are presenting ourselves as an alternative, thanking him for the good things he has done, but obviously willing to do everything he hasn't done.

What do you think of the club's current general director, mister Oliver? Who will you propose to take his place?
The day the affair with the security audits became public, the four vice-president should have resigned or Joan Oliver should have been dismissed. As clear as that. We don't count on the sport director, Txiki Berigistain, nor on the current general director of the club, who is someone we don't trust. What we want is to restructure the sports area by strengthening the youth academy, finishing the training centre and keeping the Miniestadi which should be the home of Barça Athlètic in the Spanish second division. Therefore, there will be a sports director for the youth, one for the B team and one for the first team. As I have already said in other meetings, we also want to help Lleida, Girona and Nastic de Tarragona by loaning players to them and make the other Catalan clubs stronger.

What do you think of the other candidates? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
I do not know some of them, electorally speaking, so I do not know what strengths and weaknesses they have. One has not yet presented himself so I will be friendly with him. Jaume Ferrer probably doesn't like walking because when we were doing the parade at the meeting of fan club's from all around the world in Murcia, he only joined in for the last 50 metres. I met Benedito at the gala of "The Catalan of the Year" and I did not know that he lives in Bellaterra, which very close to my hometown Sant Cugat, but I didn't discuss a lot with him.

Will you lift the veils?
I will not do what the 'Elefant Blau' did, which is promising many things and then not fulfil any of them. That's why we want to act very serious. We will do some audits, internal and external ones, to see where we stand, what the debts are, and how the budget of the club is being spent. It is something very important. We will make the audits public because it is part of the transparency we want.

Before you already spoke about Núñez. As the only candidate that has nothing to do with Laporta, could you inherit the votes of the nuñistas?
If I was a member who used to vote for Núñez, I would think twice before I voted for someone related to the 'Elefant Blau'. I am happy to say the figure of José Luis Núñez is for me a benchmark figure as president of Barça.

Were you surprised by the accusation Laporta made in his book about an offer by Rosell to split a commission for the sale of Ronaldinho to Chelsea?
I do not know what happens inside the club, but what this suggests is that a lot of things happened within the club that have not been clarified. When I say that I am an alternative to the laportism that is also because I want to clarify all these events.

In 2006, when you took part in the elections, you failed to pass the cut of the signatures, but the day they you had to present them you said you had them but that you were waiting for a plane to arrive from the Canary Islands. That plane has already arrived?
What happened in 2006 is that we said that we never again wanted to have an election campaign for the presidency of Barcelona in August. At that time, we had to collect 1.804 signatures to make the cut and we had 1.603. We did not try to appear with our picture in the media with the signatures as did another pre-candidate who didn’t make it.

this was the third and last part of this interview. you can read the first part here and the second part here.

Read more:
Guixa wants clarification on Ronaldinho commission
Guixa not considering pact with other candidacies
Guixa wants representative fan clubs in board