“When Joan Laporta left Barcelona in 2010, some of us thought that the only way he could come back as president one day was if Barca was in a state of shock, absolute shock,” says veteran Catalan football writer Frederic Porta. “And that is the situation now. That is why he is coming back.
“In Catalan, there is a phrase — ‘better the crazy we know than the wise stranger’. In the moments of gravest crisis, people look for charismatic and providential leaders. The Laporta voter did not vote for his manifesto, or for his team of directors, they voted for him. They are looking for a miracle. First time around, he achieved a small miracle… now they are hoping for a bigger miracle.”
The misrule since Laporta’s first term as Barca president from 2003 to 2010 is what has put the club into this state of shock — the confirmation of which was the 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich last summer, the culmination of an embarrassing and humiliating run of Champions League exits.
That was followed by the club’s financial position becoming clear after
Josep Maria Bartomeu’s resignation as president last October.
Years of financial mismanagement have seen the club accumulate debts of a barely believable €1.17 billion — which, for any normal business, would mean bankruptcy and liquidation.
The arrests last week of Bartomeu and three other past or present Barcelona executives in a judicial investigation into potential financial crimes at the Nou Camp was yet another reminder of just what a mess the club is in.
The hope of this miracle was what prompted a record turnout of “socios” (fan members) in the election. More than 20,000 socios located within Catalonia had earlier voted by post, then almost 35,000 more turned up at the Nou Camp and five other polling stations yesterday, for a total electorate of 55,611. Just over 30,000 of these voted for Laporta, giving him 54 per cent of the votes, ahead of Victor Font’s 30 per cent and Toni Freixa’s nine per cent. This commanding victory made Laporta the first former Barcelona president to return to the post in more than 70 years.
Among those who felt compelled to appear at the stadium on Sunday to cast their vote in person included Barcelona club captain Lionel Messi and the team’s Catalan players Sergio Busquets, Sergi Roberto, Jordi Alba and Riqui Puig. There were also former players and coaches including Bojan, Luis Enrique, Carles Puyol, Eric Abidal and Juan Carlos Unzue, as well as former club presidents Enric Reyna and Joan Gaspart.
The seriousness of the situation will not have been lost on any of these Barcelona figures, or anybody who has been following events at the Nou Camp closely over the last 12 months.
The most comparable past moment in the club’s history was, maybe, 2003, when Laporta began his first term as president. Barca were in crisis then, too, on and off the pitch — a hugely unpopular president had resigned mid-season, the team had struggled under different coaches in the previous years, the club’s finances were in a mess, and new ideas and energy were required to turn the situation around. Sound familiar?
“The campaign was magical, very magical,” recalls Claudia Vives Fierro. “We were very young and, I would even say, innocent. I was 33 years old, with three small kids. Barca was the maximum for me, to see it all cleaned up. Once you enter the club, you find out that not everything is so innocent. But the campaign was magical. They gave us zero chance of winning, but it was like a wave, a tsunami. We built support, there was contagious energy, everybody was super enthusiastic. It was a new broom, full of confidence.”
Vives Fierro was a lifelong Barca fan whose father had been involved in the club’s foundation. Through a friendship with the ex-wife of Bartomeu, she met Sandro Rosell, and then Laporta. Vives Fierro’s husband, Marc Ingla, also joined the movement of young, ambitious Catalan movers and shakers who wanted to overhaul FC Barcelona.
By this point, Laporta was already well known in Barca circles, having made his name as co-leader with Sebastia Roca of the “elefant blau” (blue elephant) platform that challenged long-time president Josep Lluis Nunez’s control of the club. In 1997, elefant blau successfully brought a motion of censure against Nunez and although it did not succeed in forcing him out immediately, the long-serving Barca chief did step down three years later, being replaced by his former vice-president Gaspart.
The protest movement continued as Gaspart’s term in charge of the club went from bad to worse. Other “Young Turks” to join Laporta’s team included Ferran Soriano, Jordi Moix and Evarist Murtra, while an even younger financial expert called Victor Font also got involved.
“It was just around the turn of the century, and Laporta represented a new generation who were arriving,” says club historian Angel Iturriaga, author of Barca: Kings of Europe.
“From the 1950s, Barca’s presidents had all been businessmen — older, very traditional — and they had not modernised the club. Laporta was a blast of fresh air — young, a successful lawyer who always knew what to say and how to bring the people with him. It made sense for him to be the leader. The others, like Rosell and Soriano, were excellent professionals but did not have that charisma that led Laporta to be known as ‘Barca’s John F Kennedy’.”
It was still far from clear that Laporta and his team would win the elections that followed Gaspart’s resignation in 2003. Lluis Bassat (who would later front the Spanish version of the Apprentice TV show) began as the favourite, with support from many important club figures including Pep Guardiola, who had agreed to be his sporting director. Guardiola instead ended up continuing as a player with Al-Ahli in Qatar after Bassat stumbled during the campaign and Laporta overtook him to win with 51 per cent of the vote.
Iturriaga says that Laporta and his team got to work very quickly and put into action a well-prepared plan to modernise the club completely from top to bottom. Former Barca player and coach Johan Cruyff had been completely outcast from the club under the previous regimes but was now back in a key role as the president’s most trusted advisor.
“They had three very strong pillars to remodel the club completely — social, financial and sporting,” Iturriaga says. “Rosell was in charge of the sporting side, but Cruyff was able to impose the coach he wanted and return the team to his ideas. On the financial side, Ferran Soriano and Marc Ingla completely turned around how the club was run. It had been still stuck in the 1950s, very old fashioned.”
Rosell wanted to appoint Brazil’s 2002 World Cup-winning coach Phil Scolari, but Laporta went for Cruyff’s choice Frank Rijkaard. A campaign promise to sign David Beckham from Manchester United was quickly forgotten and instead, Rosell used his contacts at Nike and in Brazilian football to sign Ronaldinho from Paris Saint Germain.
“Soriano and Ingla boosted the club’s income hugely and made it a global company — the transfer of Ronaldinho, a global icon, was very important for that. Barca became the team of many kids around the world.”
Other lower-profile signings overseen by the director of football
Txiki Begiristain included Mexico’s Rafael Marquez and Dutch all-rounder Giovanni van Bronckhorst. Even more importantly, homegrown youngsters Andres Iniesta and Victor Valdes joined Xavi and Puyol in the senior squad, and a young Lionel Messi was also about to emerge. Laporta’s first season as president finished without a trophy but things were clearly heading in the right direction. The second year saw the team win their first La Liga title in six years.
“In a very short space of time, they had big success,” Iturriaga says. “It was what Ferran Soriano called a ‘virtuous circle’. By making strategic big signings, they brought success to the team, and those big players helped to make the club attractive to sponsors, business partners, which helped to recover the club financially. And then they had the money to sign more players. A virtuous circle. And in the first few years, it worked extraordinarily well. People spoke about the ‘Laporta miracle’.”
The following season, Barca won the club’s second-ever European Cup by coming back to beat Arsenal 2-1. In three years, a remarkable turnaround in the club’s fortunes had been achieved, and Laporta and his directors made sure to enjoy the party in Paris.
“The celebrations were bestial,” says Vives Fierro, who was now a club director, of that night. “We had crossed the desert, and it was brutal. It was the wildest celebration I have had in my life. There was such a huge collective emotion.”
Missing from that party, however, were important members of the team who had entered Barca to change things around. The atmosphere among Laporta’s “team of rivals” was always competitive and sometimes cut-throat, and Rosell especially grew upset that Cruyff was making decisions he felt were within his remit. So in 2005, Rosell resigned from the board, leaving with four other directors including Bartomeu, who had been overseeing the club’s basketball section.
“The first year was very difficult as Sandro thought he was going to have more control,” Vives Fierro recalls. “Joan leaned on Ferran and Marc a lot, and in the sporting area, he listened to Johan Cruyff a lot. Sandro did not agree and there was a lot of tension. He tried to launch a coup, but it did not work. He brought some directors with him, but not enough.”
Vives Fierro does not, however, believe that Laporta had anything personal against Rosell, they just had different ideas about what was best for the club.
Some of Laporta’s ideas were less controversial than others. A shirt sponsorship deal signed with UNICEF in 2006 symbolised the idea of a club that was cleaner or more moral than others. But the commercial relationship with Bunyodkor, the trophy team of the Uzbekistan dictatorship, looked less principled. Especially when Laporta later admitted that his own legal firm Laporta & Arbos also had a lucrative relationship with Uzbeki oil magnate and Bunyodkor club president Miradil Djalalov.
Transfer dealings were also quite hit and miss.
Ronaldinho was a fantastic success, and getting Henrik Larsson on a free transfer from Celtic was inspired, as was snatching Mallorca’s Samuel Eto’o from under the noses of Real Madrid. However, the combined €24.4 million spent on Brazilian flops Keirrison and Henrique was less successful. There was also a 2005 deal for a land site in Can Rigalt, near the Nou Camp, which was to bring the club further legal problems down the line. Despite the team’s success, the local media (especially the Godo Group, owner of daily sports paper Mundo Deportivo and radio station RAC1) and influential socios close to the old conservative regime took every opportunity to point out any mistakes made by the new board.
“Once Rosell was outside, he built a ‘machine’ against Laporta,” says Vives Ferro. “That is clear.”
Laporta was, by now, increasingly unpopular with many sections of Barca’s fanbase, but he was actually more liked by some at the club’s greatest rival Real Madrid, as former Real Madrid president from 2006 to 2009 Ramon Calderon tells
The Athletic.
“The institutional relationship was fantastic and there were never any problems between the clubs,” Calderon says. “Just the opposite, the meals before the games between the directors were always friendly, and you can say the same about the behaviour during games and in the executive boxes. We knew we were representing rival teams but we were never enemies, always showing respect and courtesy for each other. Our personal relationship was always good, and I still consider him a friend. I believe he would say the same about me.”
Calderon was delighted when Laporta agreed for Barca’s players to give La Liga champions-elect Madrid a guard of honour onto the pitch at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu late in the 2007-08 campaign, but the mood back in the Catalan capital was less positive. A motion of censure was launched by disgruntled socios with the team again struggling as Rijkaard’s term as coach ended with another trophyless season. Despite winning a Champions League just two years previously, 61 per cent of socios voted to censure, just short of the 66 per cent required to force a referendum on whether the board should step down. Nevertheless, eight directors decided to resign, including Soriano, Ingla and Vives Fierro.
Without most of his most important allies from before, Laporta was in the tightest of pinches. At that point, he came up with the biggest masterstroke of his entire time as president.
