Stakeholders and players at FC Barcelona have started voting to elect a new president for the Catalan club after the inglorious reign of Josep Maria Bartomeu.

Contesting for the club’s top position are former president Joan Laporta, whom the Catalan press have dubbed the favourite, Toni Freixa and Victor Font.

Over 110,000 of the Liga club’s members expected to vote in polling stations in Catalonia, across Spain and via post. Already, former president Sandro Rosell, contestants Font, Laporta and Freixa; former President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas; the club’s highest goalscorer and living legend, Lionel Messi, and a host of others have voted.

The election comes five months after Bartomeu, who was arrested on Monday after a raid on Barca’s offices, resigned to avoid a vote of no-confidence.

With Messi’s future at Barca uncertain, the club facing a crippling financial crisis and they are falling behind the top sides in Europe, highlighted by thrashings at the hands of Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Paris St Germain, the new president, when elected, faces an uphill task of bringing Barca, a club which pride itself as being the top side in the world, back to glory.

Barca’s last accounts showed a gross debt of more than 1.4 billion euros while net debt more than doubled to 488 million euros by June 30 last year.

According to Reuters, all three candidates want Messi to stay, with Font talking of the need to offer him a role when he hangs up his boots. Laporta may represent the best chance of keeping him, though, as he oversaw Messi’s rise from a long-haired teenager to six-times world player of the year.