An advertising that can alter the Barcelona (Yahoo)

When everything seems sweet for the Barcelona, when a brilliant year ends, not only due to the trophies or game but also because nine of their players have consecrated World champions in South Africa with the Spanish team, when the world recognition is almost absolute, the announce of an advertising in their vest starting in the season 2011/12 may alter their peace and even seriously transform their image in the planet.

Actually, and paradoxically just on December 10th last, International Day of Human Rights, the economical vice president of the club, Javier Faus, announced that as from July 1st and for five seasons and in exchange of 165 millions of Euros (a record payment in the world), the Barcelona will pass to wear in their vest the publicity of the World Championship in Qatar 2022. The agreement includes other incomes based on sport results and friendly matches in Qatar or in Europe.

The subject of this publicity of Qatar in the Barcelona’s vest started a cyclone of critics as from the media and policy sportive as well as general.

The agreement signed with the Barcelona was produced between its new president, Sandro Rosell, and the Qatar Sports Investment (QSI), depending the Emir of Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, and this will mean that since the beginning of the next season, the vest should contain two inscriptions, the new publicity and that of the UNICEF, when it is known that from this Universal Institution is not well seen the situation of the human Rights in the oil country, though for the moment, there was no pronunciation in this regard in official manner.

The situation of the coexistence with the two advertising will be more accented during the dispute of the next Champions League, because the UEFA does not accept more than one publicity in the vests, so that the Barcelona will be obliged to decide which they will use, a problem they will not have in the Spanish League nor in the King’s Cup.

In Barcelona, in the newspaper “La Vanguardia”, the prestigious reporter Pilar Rahola, in her column, she recalled, for instance, that the Qatar Foundation, that agreed with the Barcelona, grants an annual prize bearing the name of the Egyptian sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi, who maintains among other things that “the Jews are malignant and corrupt” and that “is necessary to fight against the Israelies pregnant women because they are enemies”

“When Barca’s players will wear the vest of this foundation they will send to the World several messages, but none will be of peace and harmony. Was mister Rosell aware of all this when he dared to say that the Qatar Foundation was the same as that of UNICEF? Did the rest of Barca’s directives knew it? If they did not, they were irresponsible. If they did, then they have sold themselves to the devil. If we add to this the country itself, Qatar, where the women cannot vote, the homosexuals are punished with death, the foreign workers have almost no rights and whose president gave coup d’état, we have the picture defined of what the directives of the Barcelona’ Football Club have just done. They have involved the name of the club in children’s’ defence, to be the public voice of a dictatorship and of a foundation that loves an Islamic fundamentalist. Starting from this point, everything is possible, because between this and to wear the vest of a drug trafficker there is not much difference” insists Rahola.

To the present conduction of the Barcelona, and particularly to the president Rosell, there also arrived critics from another great newspaper of the city, “El Periódico”, through a weekly column written by the ex player, coach and honorary president, Johan Cruyff, who sustained that “ to risk the prestige for big money that represents slightly 6 or 7 percent of the budget, has no sense and of course former president as (José Luis) Núñez, (Joan) Gaspart, or (Joan) Laporta, could do it because it was easier. The risk is if they pass from “more than a club” to “one club more”

After learning about this agreement with Qatar Foundation, one of the first repercussion arrived from Israel where in the traditional television program of political journalism called” “London and Kirshembaum” (a kind of “Larry King Live” of the United States), it was suggested to burn Barcelona’s vest with the new Qatar inscription and one of the conductors cut out in the air the Qatar inscription.

In Israel the fanatism of the Barcelona is total to such a point that in the passed classic in Camp Nou of 5-0 vs the Real Madrid, some thousand of fans travelled especially, as they do it in many opportunities and now many feel sorry to have to change their club in front of this situation.

But this does not end there because the case of the publicity of the Barcelona’s vest has already entered into the European Parliament. The representative of the Catalonian Izquierda Unida -Los Verdes, Raúl Romeva, presented an report at the corresponding commission of the European Union to decide whether the use of this publicity is pertinent when Europe punishes Qatar within the International forum.

Others in change remember that immediately when Rosell arrived to the presidency he annulled contracts signed by his precedent Laporta (with whom he confronts) with Uzbekistán, sustaining that they were “incompatibles with the publication of UNICEF that we wear in our vest”. So the question is why Uzbekistán no and Qatar yes.

Perhaps the severe reply could be that Rosell is the ambassador of the Qatar candidature for 2022 same as coach of the team, Josep Guardiola, and that the today’s president with his company Bonus Sports Marketing (that now says he sold it to the Saudi DSAG), was one of the factotum of the enormous campus of selection of young promises of crack in three Continents (Latin America, Asia and Atrica) “Aspire Football Dreams”.

Everything indicates that the subject recently starts but Barcelona is in alert. So it is that Rosell had to accept that there exists the chance that the agreement drops and he said that if this happens “we shall have to rise the membership fees and look for other resources”.