Barcelona Vice President Tests Positive For Coronavirus

FC Barcelona’s vice president Jordi Cardoner has tested positive for coronavirus, according to Mundo Deportivo.

Approaching midday on Saturday in Spain, the Catalan sports daily newspaper relayed information obtained by Metrópoli Abierta, which detailed that Cardoner had become the third figure at the club after director of medical services Roman Canal and Josep Antoni Gutiérrez, the handball first team’s doctor, to be stricken by the disease.

Mundo Deportivo, via Joan Poqui, “has been able to confirm that he [Cardoner] is recovering satisfactorily” after passing the first few days of sickness “without complications”.

Thus far, it is presumed that he is not hospitalized, as Cardoner “has continued in direct contact with Barça’s board of directors, the board of trustees and the Social department without problems”, while also taking part in the last video conference that discussed the 30% reduction in players’ salaries.

Attending their last training session on March 13, no member of the first team soccer squad has been physically impacted by COVID-19 yet to common knowledge. Nor has president Josep Bartomeu.

Like the rest of the general population in Spain, Barça’s stars must obey a government-imposed 30-day lockdown set to extended to April 26 too, and continue training at home under the orders of club staff.

But there has, as implied, been a considerable economic impact with revenues severely affected.

“We are the club with the greatest revenue in the world, but it’s true that we won’t be able to reach the €1.05bn [target] that we had budgeted for,” admitted FC Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu midweek, in a series of interviews to Spanish radio and newspapers.

Lamenting that the club were “on a record pace in February, well above our expectations”, it now has “no income from ticket sales, TV rights, hospitality, stores, [or its] museum”. 

“It’s a very significant decrease in revenue and we are trying to compensate it with the reduction of salaries of athletes and employees, including executives, and with other ways of reducing costs and projects that can be put on hold,” Bartomeu went on, concluding that Barça “will change models and the way we do things” and “will have to adapt” as a “pioneer”.