Although arithmetically Futbol Club Barcelona has not yet lost the Spanish league and still has options to win the Champions League as it has not been eliminated, you would have to go back many years to find a similar concatenation of three conjoint problems within the club: the division between board, coach and players, which is already quite evident outside the four walls of the organization; the loss of a way of playing football which made the team recognizable on the field in the face of any adversity and which had talent as its main sign of identity; and, finally, a financial management which is worse than poor, the result of inexplicable player signings which have left the club's coffers with too many cobwebs.
It is the prohibition on fans entering the stadium after several months of interruption due to coronavirus which has prevented the situation at Camp Nou from becoming impossible for the current directive now that activity has resumed, after the board had already faced protest scenes in the first quarter of the year. The Bartomeu-Setién tandem evokes a spirit that is more of pity than glory in the face of the uncertainties of the former and the lack of character of the latter, who has ended up fulfilling the old maxim that not everyone is ready to reach the top, not even if he's 63 years old.
In a normal season, and not in a situation as exceptional as the current one with Covid-19, we would most likely be talking about perhaps an early calling of club elections, even if the current president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, resisted that idea tooth and nail to try to find a more optimal time to enthrone a continuist candidate. One expects, then, that the elections for the presidency of the club will be held when they're due, at the end of next season, once an attempt has been made to improve the team's hopes with new signings and polish up the accounts through the financial engineering which all the big corporations and major football clubs are familiar with, Barça among them. All this without ruling out the possibility that, since in the end football is still a sport, the ball could end up entering the net at the moment least expected or the opposing team could have a bad day.
Barça has returned to sensations of the past. Not those of the recent past, but rather from that long dark period when it was a mediocre club, one of many, devoid of charisma on the pitch and far behind the great teams of the continent. Barcelona has lived through a glorious era of a decade of success, but if the club continues to do things as badly as it has in recent times, a long journey through the desert awaits it. The organization needs someone to shake it up, as Laporta and Guardiola did in their day; it needs the new ambition of a winning and uncomplicated team, both in the offices and on the pitch. If this change is not carried out thoroughly, going beyond the personal interests and pettiness of all who might take advantage of the current situation to put their fingers in the pie, then there might be short-term gain, but long-term pain.