three continents in the hands of one of those involved in the disappearance of the Reus

BarcelonaThe executive structure of Barça currently has only one vacancy: the direction of Barça Studios, without one since the departure of Paco Latorre. The last one there was, that of the management of the New York office, was resolved a few months ago, but no new workers were signed to fill it. What was done is to give a double role to the American Bryan Bachner, who since November 2021 was already in charge of the other office that Barça has abroad, that of Hong Kong, which includes the region Asia-Pacific (East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania). The appointment of Bachner as the new director in America in October 2022 was reported internally, as club sources tell ARA, but the entity did not make any public statement to convey the news to the media communication and to its partners and followers.

The New York office was without a director from May 2021 until October 2022. Before that, it was led by former Barça handball player Xavier O’Callaghan, who Laporta once beat in the election he was asked to return to Barcelona to become the most responsible for the professional sections of the Barcelona club. Thus, from May 2021 and until a year and a half later, there was a period of uncertainty in which the Laporta board was not clear what to do with this office located in the heart of Manhattan and which, at full capacity, it means for the club an annual cost of between three and four million euros. In fact, Barça’s issues in North America and Latin America during that period were brought from Barcelona.

“Finally, they decided to continue with the office. From that moment on, they proposed and rejected the management to several people”, a source familiar with Barça’s movements in the United States tells ARA. According to this newspaper, one of the people who was offered the position was the former director of the club’s foundation during the term of Josep Maria Bartomeu, Maria Vallès. But they had to withdraw the offer when President Laporta found out and expressed his displeasure.

A big stain: the disappearance of Reus

Bachner is an old friend of Laporta who people who know him well at Barça consider that he has “a senior profile, of which we don’t have many now”. Although he is American, he speaks very good Mandarin thanks to the fact that he was a professional basketball player in Asia for a decade. Its two meters of height give some hint. The knowledge of Mandarin, his almost five years as director of BIT Football Club (a Chinese football club) and the personal and professional relationship with Laporta catapulted him to head the Hong Kong office.

But his professional CV has a big blemish: Bachner was the director of CSSB Limited, the company led by the CEO of Barça during Laporta’s first term, Joan Oliver, which led to the disappearance of Reus Deportiu by not passing the bankruptcy in 2021. Two years earlier, the League, presided over by Javier Tebas, expelled the first team from the professional competitions when it was playing in the Second Division for non-payment of players, including those of the subsidiary. The debt exceeded nine million euros.

Two offices, two different realities

“America and Asia-Pacific are two very different markets. You need a manager who is 100% in each of the geographies”, says a former Barça executive. On the other hand, another person who knows intimately how these Blaugrana offices work points out that it depends on the power that the management wants to give them: “If you have a business plan for expansion, to seek commercial rights, to carry forward the academies and participate in person in the events, among other issues, having a single director for two offices is unfeasible. But if your pretension is that of whose day passes, year pushes, it is something else”.

In this sense, the same source explains: “One of the objectives of the offices when Barça created them was to eliminate intermediaries in sponsorship negotiations to leave more money for the club”. Instead, he assures that at the moment “all the sponsorship operations that are being closed have intermediaries”, with the clearest example being Spotify, negotiated by Darren Dein. The pattern of a single director of offices for three continents is repeated in Barça’s commercial department. Since April 2022, Marc Bruix is ​​also the director of sponsorships for America and the Asia-Pacific.