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The under-fire president of Spanish football club Barcelona, Juan Laporta, will resign from his post on Thursday after he narrowly survived a weekend confidence vote, Catalan daily Sport reported on its website Tuesday.
Laporta has been forced into this position by his management committee who are due to hold an emergency meeting on Thursday following two years of turbulence where the club failed to win any major titles, it claimed.
Laporta survived a confidence vote on Sunday even though less than half of all supporters who participated backed him.
The 45-year-old got the backing of just 37.75 percent of the 39,389 supporters who took part in the vote while 60.60 percent voted against him staying on until his current mandate at the Spanish club ends in June 2010.
To be successful the motion against Laporta needed to have the support of over two-thirds of voters.
Barcelona refused to comment of the report but confirmed that an emergency meeting of management would be held on Thursday.
"We'll see what happens Thursday," a club spokesman told AFP.
Laporta has headed the club since 2003 and was re-elected in 2006. If he does step down, Barcelona vice-president Albert Vinces will likely replace him until the next elections are held in 2010, according to Sport.
Under Laporta the club won back-to-back league titles in 2005 and 2006, along with the Champions League in 2006 but he has grown increasingly unpopular with supporters due to the recent drought in silverware.
Barcelona ended the season in third place, meaning they missed out on automatic qualification for the Champions League.
Lawyer Oriol Giralt, who collected over 9,000 votes from fellow club members in May to force Barcelona to hold the confidence vote, urged the club's board on Sunday to examine the results closely, saying they sent a clear message.
"They should consider how it is possible to continue with so many people signing against them," he told reporters after the results of the confidence vote were announced.
"If I had been president of Barca for some time and then a result like this came, I would resign."
An online poll by Barcelona-based sports daily Mundo Deportivo found that 81 percent of it readers think Laporta should now resign while a similar poll in Sport found 66 percent felt he should quit.
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