Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu resigned Tuesday amid the fallout of his feud with star Lionel Messi, and on his way out revealed the Spanish club wants to join a potential new super league of elite European teams.

After one of the club’s worst seasons in more than a decade, Bartomeu announced that his entire board of directors also resigned, effectively avoiding a motion of censure vote that was scheduled for the coming weeks.
Bartomeu wanted to delay the vote, citing health concerns for the club’s more than 110,000 members amid the coronavirus pandemic, but local officials earlier in the day authorized the vote to take place.

“We have to act responsibly,” Bartomeu said. “For that reason we cannot hold the vote of censure in the current circumstances. It was necessary to do so in conditions that guaranteed everybody’s health. We cannot nor want to put ourselves in a position of having to choose between protecting people’s health and exercising the right to vote. For that reason we have taken the decision to not call the vote and resign forthwith.”

More than 20,000 Barcelona members had signed a petition for Bartomeu and his board to face a motion of censure. The petition was made not long after Messi said he wanted to leave the club, and following the team's embarrassing 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich in the Champions League, a result that capped the club's first season without a title since 2007-08