Love, like, loathe or disdain him, Barcelona President Joan Laporta is certainly singular in the manner he goes about things. Charismatic but brash, many were shocked when he sanctioned the sale of a number of Barcelona assets in exchange for €667m – essentially in order to carry out a soft rebuild of the squad.
Ultimately, that worked in the short term when the La Liga title arrived 10 months later. Still, many in Barcelona were uncomfortable with the idea that nearly 50% of Barca Studios and 25% of their TV rights for the next 25 years. The phrase ‘mortgaging the future of the club’ was bandied around often.
Yet in a recent interview with TV3, carried by Sport, Laporta made a succinct statement that reveals the fundamental part of his strategy.
“Football has a very powerful emotional factor. It is different from any other business.”
“For the rest it is not so different. You also invest, in this case in players, in facilities and returning to the ‘virtuous circle’, investing in players makes the members and fans more closely linked to the entity and the club, consume the club and that the economy is strengthened to invest in football again.”
Fans and observers will be all over the spectrum in turns of agreement, but there can be no doubt that at least last season, if had the desired impact. Camp Nou hosted more fans than anyone else in Europe last season, with attendance levels skyrocketing in the Catalan capital. In addition, the support from those crowds was as committed as it has been in years.
As tends to be the case, the true cost will only become evident further down the line. Certainly this summer Barcelona are still struggling with the aftermath of years of mismanagement and the pandemic, yet signings like Ferran Torres are yet to pay dividends.
Laporta realizes that Barca have to win to erase the nonsense of the Bartomeu era. The club have to spend what they can to win as much as they can, and that failing to move forward is guaranteed misery for years to come. Some people would say he’s reckless; in my opinion that’s a very short-sighted viewpoint. In situations like this one has to be courageous and optimistic, because failing to invest now guarantees that the club falls behind in the long run, and there’s no recovering from that.
agreed