Barcelona board members resign

Barcelona president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, on Monday confirmed that two of the club’s board members have resigned, in the wake of his decision to play their La Liga fixture against Las Palmas behind closed doors.

The game went on despite a violent crackdown by police of an independence referendum for Catalonia on Sunday.

“Today the board of directors has accepted the resignations of vice-president Carles Vilarrubi and the commissioner of the Barca Innovation Hub, Jordi Mones,” Bartomeu told a press conference after an extraordinary board meeting.

Vilarrubi and Mones are believed to have been in favour of Barca refusing to play, even if it meant forfeiting the match against Las Palmas and being docked a further three points by La Liga.

“We perfectly understand that many of our members and fans would have preferred the option of calling off the match.

“I decided to play behind closed doors because we believed that the image of a football match being played in a completely empty Camp Nou…would have been a way of showing how we utterly reject the exceptional and inadmissible situation going on in Catalonia,” Bartomeu added.

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