Joan Laporta returns to the helm of FC Barcelona as President. The 58-year-old received 54.28 percent of the votes in the club's internal election on Sunday evening. The inferior competitors Victor Font (29.99 percent) and Toni Freixa (8.58 percent) lagged far behind. The lawyer and politician had promised during the election campaign, among other things, to persuade superstar Lionel Messi to stay. Laporta had been Barca president from 2003 to 2010.
Image: APA (AFP)
During this time, there were two Champions League titles and the appointment of Josep Guardiola as a coach. The 58-year-old Laporta succeeds Josep Maria Bartomeu, who stepped down as president in October to forestall a vote of no confidence by members. They turned against him after Lionel Messi tried to leave the club last August and the team went down 8-2 in the Champions League against Bayern Munich. Messi was one of several Barca players to vote the day after Osasuna won 2-0.
The club said 51,765 of 109,531 members took part in the vote, which had been postponed from January to March due to coronavirus restrictions in Catalonia. A total of 30,184 people voted for Laporta. In a brief speech, Laporta said: “Twenty years ago a little boy named Leo Messi made his debut for the Barca youth team. To see the best player in the world come to the vote today is a clear sign of what we keep on going say: Leo loves Barca. The best player in the world loves Barca and I hope this is a sign that he will stay at Barcelona, which is what we all want. “
Laporta is taking over a club with enormous financial problems, including because the COVID-19 pandemic is preventing revenue from ticket sales and severely affecting merchandising income. Most recently, Barca had gross debt of more than € 1.4 billion ($ 1.67 billion) and net debt of € 488 million. The club agreed to a temporary cut in player salaries last year while delaying payments to players in December.
Things looked good on the pitch recently: Under Dutch coach Ronald Koemans, the team won 13 of their last 16 league games and reached the Copa del Rey final. Laporta's first match in his second term as president is the second leg of the Champions League round of 16 against Paris St. Germain in the French capital on Wednesday. The first leg in Barcelona was lost 4-1.
In the 2015 club elections, he was clearly inferior to Bartomeu. Bartomeu was arrested by the police last Monday. The allegations are of inappropriate management and corruption. The club's Camp Nou offices were also searched during a raid. Bartomeu did not comment on his arrest and exercised his right not to make a statement in court.
Laporta had also been involved as a politician in a small nationalist party in recent years and, as a member of the Catalan regional parliament, promoted the idea of an independent Catalan state. For economic reasons and to preserve “dignity”, as he once revealed in an APA conversation. “Spain is suffocating us,” he said in the 2014 interview.
