It’s been just over three years since Joan Laporta took over the reins of FC Barcelona. A return to the head of the club which is however, for the moment at least, more complicated than his first stage as Blaugrana boss. Whether on a sporting or institutional level, without forgetting the financial aspect, Barça is going through a difficult situation. His summer of 2024, marked by the difficulty in trimming and registering players, has generated a wave of terrible criticism against a Laporta who had until now been relatively spared.
And the manager, who is also blamed for the famous Messi episode, can thank Hansi Flick, since the team’s good performances at the start of the season are masking these problems somewhat and are in the process of satisfying the abutmentsallowing Laporta to slip a little better under the radar. But behind the scenes, the opposition is already preparing for the 2026 presidential elections, in which Joan Laporta will be able to run again.
Bring out the sprayer
Victor Font, a former presidential candidate who could run again in 2026, thus offered a lapidary media outing against the current president. “We have been unable to generate profits for two years. We are told that this season, we will be in the green, but that is not true. We need to bring in money to settle the debt of 1.2 billion euros. We are about three-quarters of the way through the mandate and each day that passes is worse than the last. There are fewer work plans, fewer competent people. To have a project, it is necessary to have competent people. We are asking the president to call early elections for 2025.”Font first launched, before mentioning the case of Gündogan, released to save money: “The Gündogan affair sums up everything I said. He was the star recruit of last summer. At the beginning of the summer, we were told that everyone was happy with his presence. Then, we were told that it was for sporting reasons, but he was paid 3 months’ salary. We need to stop running this club like a family.”.
He then mentioned the cases of Nico Williams and Dani Olmo: “With Williams I saw that we were being made fun of, that we were being deceived. When I said that we couldn’t sign him, I was made fun of. People believe the club’s lies. We can’t believe them. Dani Olmo? Faced with the inability to manage the club and not being able to bring in money, it blocked everything, and no one explained anything. We’ve been registering players at the last minute for two years, we’ve gotten used to it. If there weren’t rules allowing exceptions to be made (Christensen’s injury which allowed Olmo to be registered, Editor’s note), we wouldn’t have registered anyone. There’s a lack of transparency.”. The message has been received…
