Former Barcelona vice-president in the running for Manchester City chief executive role An entrepreneur who speaks five languages, Soriano is chairman of Spanish airline Spanair, a fact that may have helped bring him to City's attention given their close ties to Etihad. Soriano was a central figure in the Laporta regime at Barcelona. He joined the board in 2003 and was appointed vice-president and head of economics at the club, and worked as general manager. He resigned from the board along with Laporta in 2008, and is understood to have fallen out of favour with the current Barcelona president, Sandro Rosell. In his first three years at the club revenues grew and the club moved into a profit-making position, but as well as commercial and financial input he had intimate involvement in the running of the football side of the business and had a close working relationship with Barcelona's technical director Txiki Beguiristain. There have been suggestions in Barcelona circles that if Soriano is appointed at City he may seek to bring Beguiristain, one of the most highly-rated coaches in the European game, with him. Were that to happen it would raise questions over the football structure at the Etihad, in which Brian Marwood has the senior role as director of football. Marwood is highly regarded at the club and has worked closely with manager Roberto Mancini during recent high-profile issues, most notably the fallout from the Carlos Tévez controversy. Soriano was closely involved in Barcelona's transfer dealings throughout his five years at the club, and also has relationships with many of the leading executives in European football. While at Barcelona he was a member of the executive committee of G-14, the grouping of the most powerful European clubs that then became the European Club Association. He also represented Barcelona on Uefa's European Club Forum, and served on the competitions committee of the Champions League. Soriano has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and consumer businesses, and has held senior positions at the Mac Group and Cluster Consulting, a telecommunications consultant. He currently chairs the airline Spanair, and was appointed after a group of leading Catalan businessmen bought the struggling airline network in 2009. He was charged with expanding connections to Barcelona but the company has run into trouble recently. Leyton Orient pondering their Olympic Stadium options As West Ham United ponder whether a bid for the Olympic Stadium makes financial sense ahead of next Monday's deadline for all candidates, they are not the only London football club who are considering their options. Leyton Orient are full participants in the "expressions of interest" phase, and are considering what kind of offer they might be able to make to the increasingly anxious Olympic Park Legacy Company. An issue for both football clubs is that the OPLC will retain the power to force tenants to share with each other. The "pairing" system means that tenants have no choice about who they share with, meaning that the OPLC could impose a rugby club in a ground-share with West Ham, or pursue sharing between West Ham and Orient. That would present a bigger problem to West Ham than to Leyton Orient.