There is just a week to go before the presidential elections at FC Barcelona, a sporting institution that has played an inseparable and much loved part of my life for many years . And yet I feel so dispassionate about the event, to the point of negativity. As a member of the Barca’s London Penya or fan club, I have failed to volunteer to collect signatures for two of the leading contenders –Joan Laporta and Josep Maria Bartomeu, and I have decided not to exercise my right as a club member to help define the outcome , choosing an option I have always eschewed- abstention.
How is it, you may ask, that I not only squander this rare opportunity to participate in a democratic process involving not just a major football club, but one that since 2003 has been experiencing the most successful results in its 117 year old history?
The simple answer is that I have become increasingly disillusioned with the use Barca has made of its ‘democracy’, and the extent to which its long enduring mythology of ethical rectitude and sportsmanship – summed up in the slogan ‘mes que un club’- more than a club , have become somewhat tainted.
To recap. Back in 2003, I was euphoric on the day Joan Laporta, one of the two leading contenders for the presidency, was elected president for the first time. I had befriended Laporta five years earlier when his broad opposition grassroots movement of fans known as the Blue Elephant was engaged in an audacious attempt to unseat the longest ruling individual in the history of Catalonia , the then president of Barca , Jose Luis Núñez .
A vote of no confidence in 1998 led by Laporta in the Núñez presidency had been narrowly defeated. But it turned out to be the opening salvo of a war of attrition that within five years would see the disappearance of Núñez and most of his key cohorts from the Nou Camp-including his deputy Joan Gaspart who briefly succeeded him-and their replacement as president by Laporta.
In my book Barca, A People’s Passion published for the first time in 1999 I exposed Núñez as a ruthless bully, a construction magnate who had made a fortune destroying historic buildings and speculating on dubious new property developments. It would take more than another decade before Núñez had criminal charges brought against him . He is now serving a prison sentence.
By contrast , Laporta went on to secure the loyalty of many Barca fans, presiding over several seasons of wonderfully entertaining football, unrivalled in its skill and vision, from the excitement of Ronaldinho and the young Messi’s early days with the club through to the glory days of when Barca became the first Spanish club to win the treble in Guardiola’s first season in charge with the best club team in the history of football.
But just two years into his presidency, after a faltering start in football result terms, Laporta’s reputation suffered its first set-back when the Spanish press published documents showing that Alejandro Echevarría, a club director and the president’s brother-in-law, had until recently been a leading trustee of the Francisco Franco foundation, set up by the dictator’s family to honour his memory. Echevarria resigned from the club ,leaving Laporta´s credibility tarnished given that he had earlier insisted his brother-in-law had never been a member of the Franco foundation.
Deepening controversy from allegations of paranoid misuse of private detectives to spy on opponents to reports of wild orgiastic parties provoked growing growing tension between Laporta and his own executive board leading to highly publicised resignations including that of his original running mate and deputy Sandro Rosell .
After himself surviving a motion of no confidence by members in June 2008, Laporta stayed on as president for another two years . He was succeeded by Rosell who went on to try, unsuccessfully, to have Laporta and some of the more loyal members of his team heavily fined and jailed for alleged financial mismanagement of club funds . For his part Laporta continues to support an Independent Catalunya while recently defining Barca as a club that is “Catalan, Spanish, and European , where all creeds co-exist but where what one has to do is preserve the Catalan roots.”
I would like to believe that Laporta is a democrat and true cule who loves the beautiful game , even if a bit of an old rogue, but am I wrong in thinking there is a potentially divisive nationalist populist and demagogue lurking there too? Reassure me, it’s not so, Joan.
Yet Laporta is not the only candidate that leaves me so far underimpressed. Rosell, no political animal but a person with controversial business credentials, himself eventually stepped down after facing increasing questions over his handling of Neymar’s transfer which Spain’s inland revenue suspected of involving a tax dodge. This has left the club since last year under the presidency of Rosell’s former deputy and close ally Josep Maria Bartomeu who has now merged as the front-runner, ahead of Laporta, in the current campaign.
Bartomeu’s presidential first season has seen Barca win another treble while pursuing a business strategy focused on the club’s partnership with Nike and Qatar and an all-powerful marketing department. The presence of home grown talent moulded by the youth academy has diminished, and the creative midfield which had Xavi as the team’s pivotal figure has made way tactically to an attacking trio of foreign superstars, with Messi- unquestionably the best player world , an essential element in Barca’s success last season.
Call me an unreconstructed nostalgic but I miss talent from the youth academy La Massia, the team spirit, the choreography , the poetry in motion, created in mid-field , that characterised the best of the Guardiola era, and I feel gutted that Xavi has ended up in Qatar which I feel already has far too great an influence on Barca, and world football generally. Arguably Barca’ s organisation needs to become less political and more business-like , but it needs to be careful not to get rid of those values that lie behind its claim to being more than just another big football club , bent only on making as much money as possible, never mind the means or the outcome.
Without waiting for the election, but hoping to secure it, despite still under investigation along with Rosell , for the Neymar deal, Bartomeu has unveiled the club’s big summer signing Arda Turan following his euros34m transfer from Atlético Madrid. I have no reason to doubt that this is the real figure- and he is the right player for Barca- or have I? Was Neymar worth all the wheeling and dealing? I remain unconvinced.
So given the choice between Laporta and Bartomeu I feel I am between a rock and a hard, disconcertingly dispassionate. However I have yet to lose my faith . I want to believe that glory days are still ahead and that Barca can regain its credibility as a model of true sportsmanship, on and off the field. So watch this space.
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