Barcelona are an absolute mess right now.

Years and years of mismanagement have now culminated in the club being unable to re-sign Lionel Messi.

The team who once reigned supreme in Europe are now the continent's laughing stock and it's hard to see where they go from here.

As well as losing Messi, Barcelona are currently not able to register their new signings from this summer, as the wage bill is still far too large.

How did things get this bad? Well, as most football fans are aware, those at the top of the tree pulling the strings have made some disastrous decisions down the years.

The man most responsible for Barcelona's downfall is former club president, Josep Maria Bartomeu.

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He was appointed in January 2014 and while the team certainly enjoyed on-pitch success during his reign, there were always signs that things would end up going wrong - which they now have in pretty epic fashion.

A detailed Twitter thread by @EiFSoccer explains how Bartomeu was the catalyst for Barcelona being destroyed from both a sporting and financial perspective.

Twitter thread: How Bartomeu crushed Barcelona

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There's a case to be made that Bartomeu is the worst club president in footballing history.

Spending astronomical sums on transfer fees, offering ageing players lengthy contracts on enormous wages, ignoring La Masia and much, much more, the 58-year-old's time in charge was an unmitigated disaster.

In his press conference explaining Messi's departure, Laporta was eager to highlight the ineptitude of the Bartomeu regime.

“I’m here to explain the situation we’ve reached with Lionel Messi,” he said. “First of all, I would like to say the inheritance we’ve received is awful. It’s dreadful. We were already at 100 per cent. We don’t have any margin in terms of salary and the rules and regulations of the Spanish La Liga is regulated by FFP and we don’t have any margin.

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“We knew that when we got to the club, but I have to say that when we got to the club the numbers that were presented to us, those numbers are a lot worse than those exposed initially and those we were working with.

“The losses are a lot more elevated than we had expected and what we’re spending is a lot more than what we expected. The current contracts means we have this salary mass of great magnitude and it allows us no margin."

Barcelona's problems are not going away anytime soon and sadly for the club's loyal fans, there's a significant chance that they'll only get worse.