This a copy of the letter sent out to Barca fans this week regarding "sponsorship" on the famous blue and red strip.
Barca will have a "sponsor" on the strip for the first time.......



"To all followers of FC Barcelona,

The purpose of this letter is to inform you about the agreement that we will sign with UNICEF in New York today. Under this five-year agreement, the FC Barcelona football team will wear the UNICEF logo on their shirts this season. The first team will unveil the new shirt this coming Tuesday, when we play our first Champions League match against PFC Levski Sofia at Camp Nou.

In August 2003, the General Assembly of members authorised the Club Board to negotiate an agreement to place advertising on the team shirts, as the economic situation the club was in when we took office obliged us to explore all the possibilities for generating income.

Fortunately, thanks to our collective efforts, to good economic management in recent years, to the sporting successes the club has achieved and to the renewed enthusiasm of everyone involved, there no longer exists such a pressing need for the financial benefits that we could obtain from placing advertising on the club shirt.

In view of this fact, several months ago the Board began a process of reflection to decide the best option for branding the shirt. This debate coincided with another aimed at positioning FC Barcelona as "més que un club" - more than a club - worldwide. The conclusion was that we should place our greatest asset, the shirt, at the service of this ambitious project.

FC Barcelona is more than a club in Catalonia. It is our country's most representative sporting institution, and one of its leading ambassadors. For different reasons, too, FC Barcelona is more than a club for many people in the rest of Spain, who saw Barça as a speaker for freedom and democratic rights.

Football today has become global. The FC Barcelona fanbase has spread and grown spectacularly all over the world, as new members from outside Catalonia and Spain join every day. The club cannot but respond to this rising global wave of followers. There is both a need and an obligation to provide such a response, and we feel that the most consistent way of doing so is to take another step towards becoming more than a club worldwide.

The motto "més que un club" is an open definition. It is this flexibility, perhaps, that makes it such an appropriate way of defining the complex identity of FC Barcelona. There has always been a Barça that plays every Sunday and every Wednesday and a Barça whose heart beats constantly, every day, to the rhythm of people's concerns. This Barça is now a global club. Now we want to globalise the Barça that cares about its people too. We want to globalise the civic-minded, caring, humanitarian Barça.

And we believe that the best way of doing this is to enter into an alliance with UNICEF, the fund set up by the United Nations to foster children's welfare. Firstly, we decided to donate 0.7 per cent of club income to the FC Barcelona Foundation and to formally support the United Nations Millennium Goals. Next, we decided to contribute one-and-a-half million euros to the humanitarian work of UNICEF over the next five years, and to display the fund's logo on the club football shirt. We are convinced that this is an excellent agreement, as it positions FC Barcelona in an absolutely unique dimension.

We are aware of the challenges that this decision places before us. To be more than a club is something we must all work towards together, every day: players, coaching staff, directors, employees, members, fan clubs and followers - we all have a role to play in this. But we are convinced that we can do it, and we believe, too, that this project will help us to fulfil our ambition of making Barça a truly universal club.

We hope that you will find this project as exciting as we do, and that you will make it your own. It is the greatest challenge we have taken on for the next few years. Many thanks for your support and confidence."

Joan Laporta i Estruch

President of FC Barcelona


Class

Would that more clubs take this unselfish attitude to concerns outside their immediate remit. A positive attitude to the problems locally, nationally and yes worldwide. A prime example would be the old firm being more upbeat re the sectarian problem surrounding their clubs and the country. As far as our case more promotion of the community at large not just in the football arena would help to generate loyalty and support from fans and fans to be with the possiblity of generating sponsorship from business.

We all know that Brown did not have this attitude but now that he is on the way out perhaps the club could begin a Brown free era along these lines. There was a good start by having the pipe band at the last game. Let's keep this up and build on it.

Barca show the way as a community club despite their massive status they put to shame other clubs of their stature. Still a shame to see the famous shirts with sponsors on, but for a good cause.

East Fife can do similar given the right guidance.

Archigole is God

Yes.
The world is ok.
Let's have some more of this.

Apparently the Barca fans had a nickname for Archibald that translated as "White Rat" owing to his rather fair compelxion and pointed facial features.