Barcelona: Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu believes the upcoming referendum on a proposed 600 million euro ($828 million) renovation of the Camp Nou and surrounding facilities is more important to the club than the popularity of the current board.
Bartomeu took charge of the club at the end of January after Sandro Rosell resigned as he faced legal action accusing him of misappropriation of funds for not disclosing the destination of all the money spent in bringing Brazilian star Neymar to the club last summer.
Subsequently, on Bartomeu's first day in charge, the club revealed all the figures and clauses involved in the deal, which totalled 86.2 million euros.
However, as a result Barca were then indicted for an alleged tax fraud of 13.5 million euros by a Spanish judge linked to the signing.
The club have voluntarily paid that amount in full, although they continue to protest their innocence and remain confident of having the money returned following a full investigation.
The club's 164,000 members will have the chance to vote in favour of the renovation project which includes not only work on the current football stadium, but also a new basketball arena and club offices across a 20 hectare site on April 5.
Speaking exclusively to AFP sports, Bartomeu stressed that the referendum is not a opinion poll on his succession to the presidency.
"It is a project that will last for the next 50 or 60 years, therefore it cannot be something tied to this board.
"All that we have done is for the club, we have worked at it, done the studies and now we are putting forward an informative and democratic campaign to the members. The important thing for us and everyone else is that the referendum is the club's project, not the board's."
As a means of funding the project should the proposal get the green light at the referendum, the club will look to sell title rights to the stadium, meaning a sponsor's name would appear alongside the historic Camp Nou name.
An overhaul of the stadium would also allow Barcelona to drastically improve their current corporate and hospitality facilities to significantly increase their matchday revenue, one of the few economic areas in which they still lag behind their rivals on the European stage.
"We are not going to use naming rights, but title rights. Our idea is that the Camp Nou will have a surname.
"It is a way to help finance the project. This is an ambitious project that in total with the basketball arena and the new stadium for the Barca B football team is around 600 million euros, which is a huge investment.
"With the title right we will finance a third of the project. The other two thirds will come from income that the club has and generates regularly and from the extra income we will have thanks to the new facilities."
However, Bartomeu is steadfast that the extra commercialisation of the club along with the bad publicity generated by Neymar's signing does not damage Barca's "more than a club" motto.
"FC Barcelona, for the members and those of us who are fans, is more than a club. It has always been so.
"In this case we have always tried to demonstrate and use the values that represent Barcelona in our declarations, actions, in the way in which we have managed the club and will continue to do so.
"In the case of Neymar we are very calm because we have done things properly, and legally.
"Moreover, we are not a club that is used to signing players constantly from other clubs. We are a club that always tries to form players in our academy, who grow little by little before arriving at the first team."
