Johan Cruyff quits Barcelona post

Former Dutch and Barcelona great Johan Cruyff has resigned from his position as honorary president of the Spanish champions, the club said.

Cruyff presented his resignation at a news conference on Friday given by Barcelona’s new chairman, Sandro Rosell, after the board announced that the position of honorary president “does not exist under the club’s statute.”

“Nobody wants to have a title that doesn?t exist,” Rosell said. “It?s not in the statutes. I?d have done the same.”

But he said the board planned to vote on whether the position should exist and who should occupy it.

Cruyff was quoted in the Spanish media as saying the decision was “hard to accept” but said he did “not want to be caught in the middle.”

“It seems I’m a nuisance,” he said, according to sports daily Marca.

The Dutchman was named in March to the position of honorary president, which “carries no executive responsibilities”, by former Barcelona chairman Joan Laporta.

Cruyff, 63, a three-time European Footballer of the Year, started his career as a teenager at Ajax Amsterdam before going on to enjoy huge success with Barca, whom he then coached to the 1992 European Cup and four straight league titles between 1991 and 1994.

Last November, he took over as coach of the Catalonia regional team in Spain.

Rosell took over as chairman of the Catalan giants on Thursday after being elected on June 13 to replace Laporta, who has held the post since 2003.

A former Nike executive, Rosell was on the club’s board between 2003 and 2005 during Laporta’s first term but he fell out with Laporta over the way the club was being run.