Barcelona presidential candidate Xavier Vilajoana believes the club's problems began with the sale of Neymar.
Barca lost Neymar to PSG four years ago when the French giants agreed to pay his €222m buyout clause.
Vilajoana told AS: "The departure of Neymar affected the club in the sense that the regeneration that had been thought began with Neymar, who should've been Messi's natural replacement.
"And then you leave in the middle of the project which generates a shock that, at that moment, confused. The fact of having a world star who could decide matches confused the thinking that a single player could win matches. We lost sight of the added value of the community. And that's when sports policy began to go wrong.
"Trying to search for trading cards to find a substitute. And a team never find substitutes but other players who can contribute different things to a squad. And that was the mistake."
