Joan Laporta Has Failed Barcelona
“Joan Laporta, a volcanic personality, capable of good and evil at the same time, electric, bold... He [Pep] needed to display calm and sobriety to compensate for Laporta’s histrionics... The years under Laporta’s leadership were not calm, despite the undeniable success. Team and club went their separate ways.”
Those are the words of Martí Perarnau, journalist, close friend of Pep Guardiola’s and writer of Herr Pep — the brilliant book about Guardiola’s first season at Bayern Munich. I felt it was appropriate to bring those words back to light, and use them as the basis for what I would argue is a statement that needs to be made at this moment: Joan Laporta is failing Barcelona.
The man who returned to power in 2021 won the election with a simple message: “I did it before and we turned into the biggest club in the world. I’m still that dude. Source: trust me bro.” Laporta became FC Barcelona president for a second time using his charisma to trick us all into embarking on a nostalgia act, but instead of the glories that came along with the histrionics, volcanic personality and electricity, we’re getting only the histrionics, volcanic personality and electricity with one embarrassing headline on and off the pitch after another.
Joan Laporta has failed to deliver on his promises. He promised a return to the greatest days this club has ever seen, and promised to do so by getting the club out of the economic hell it put itself in by the previous administration. He promised losing would have consequences, and he promised it wouldn’t be long until Barça fans could smile again like they did a decade and a half ago.
Barcelona fans are not smiling, the financial situation is by all accounts even worse than it was three years ago, and one La Liga title and two big victories over Real Madrid (in March 2022 and January 2023) are all the “glory” we’ve gotten. The club’s reputation in Europe is even worse somehow, and Laporta quite literally sold a considerable percentage of the club’s financial future to build a mediocre squad that hasn’t even reached an European semi-final, either in the Champions League or the Europa League.
He fired Ronald Koeman and brought in Xavi Hernández, not because he wanted to, but because the fans asked for it. Plenty of very reliable reports at the time of Laporta’s election claimed he didn’t want Xavi because he was Victor Font’s guy, and Laporta didn’t want to appoint his adversary’s favorite manager. But the fan support for the legendary midfielder convinced Laporta to change his mind, and he has since caved to almost every wish that Xavi had by signing players of questionable quality and age for large sums of money that the club doesn’t really have.
Now that those questionable signings have vastly underperformed, Laporta and his associates have displayed a remarkable level of incompetence in trying to sell those players, when quite a few of them — like Robert Lewandowski and Ferran Torres — were brought in more as marketing stunts that actual solutions to the team’s tactical problems in the first place.
Joan Laporta then brought in Deco as a sporting director, a man who not only has zero experience as an executive — and was chosen simply due to his connections to players as a former agent — but also a man who doesn’t see eye to eye with Xavi, which has created giant conflicts of interest in at least two cases: one was Ousmane Dembélé, who according to multiple reports decided to leave for Paris Saint-Germain in part because he felt there was preferential treatment being shown to Deco’s former client Raphinha, which then affected the amount of salary Dembélé was being offered during his contract renewal negotiations.
Whether Dembélé’s feelings are valid or not the simple truth is this would have never happened if Laporta either kept Mateu Alemany, who was perhaps the biggest reason for Barça’s ability to stay competitive during the financial crisis created by the pandemic, or replaced Alemany with a real sports executive regardless of their connections.
The second big mess related to Deco is playing out before our very eyes with Vitor Roque, who was signed for big money last summer and had his arrival fast-tracked in January. Xavi reportedly wanted a midfielder to replace the injured Gavi in the winter, but Deco wanted Roque to join as soon as possible and went above the coach’s wishes when Xavi very obviously did not want to work with Roque at the time.
Vitor Roque has barely played since, and there’s a huge mess surrounding his situation in the summer as Barça want a loan move for the Brazilian while the player’s agent has publicly stated his desire for a permanent transfer.
And if you think the craziness ended there, Joan Laporta is now considering sacking Xavi after being personally offended by the coach’s comments in a press conference on Wednesday. Xavi made the very realistic and obvious observation that Barça don’t have a squad as strong as the other big clubs in Europe due to their financial issues, but Laporta’s inner circle took that as a direct shot at the president, who believe Xavi is deflecting from his own failures as a coach by blaming Laporta for not spending enough money.
So just a couple of weeks after practically begging Xavi to reverse his decision to leave and announce to the world that he would be staying, Laporta now wants to fire his coach because he had the audacity of telling the truth about the president’s incompetence. You really can’t make this stuff up.
Three years ago Barcelona needed a calm, level-headed, strategic leader who had a clear plan to solve the club’s issues one by one, and who was ready to tell the truth to a fanbase that would be willing to accept a few rough years on the pitch if it also meant that real progress and change was happening behind the scenes.
Instead we get a... how did Perarnau put it again? Oh, right: a volcanic personality, capable of good and evil at the same time, electric, bold, and prone to histrionics. And the last three years on the pitch have still been rough while the fanbase has been told lie and after lie and no real progress or change have happened behind the scenes.
Joan Laporta has failed Barcelona. His charisma and resumé alone don’t work anymore. Barcelona need real, systemic change, and Joan Laporta has already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is not the man to make it happen.