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Laporta new president of FC Barcelona
© APA (AFP)
Joan Laporta returns to the front of FC Barcelona as president. The 58-year-old received 54.28 percent of the vote in the club’s internal elections on Sunday night. Inferior competitors Víctor 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 president of Barça from 2003 to 2010.
During this time, there were two Champions League titles and the appointment of Josep Guardiola as coach. Laporta, 58, succeeds Josep Maria Bartomeu, who resigned from the presidency in October to avoid a vote of no confidence by the members. They turned against him after Lionel Messi tried to leave the club last August and the team lost 8-2 in the Champions League to Bayern Munich. Messi was one of several Barça players who voted the day after Osasuna won 2-0.
The club said 51,765 of 109,531 members participated 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 short speech, Laporta said: “Twenty years ago a boy named Leo Messi made his debut with the Barça youth squad. Seeing the best player in the world come to the vote today is a clear sign of what we keep coming back to.” say: Leo loves Barça. The best player in the world loves Barça and I hope it is a sign that he will stay at Barcelona, which is what we all want ”.
Laporta is taking over a club in huge financial trouble, even as the COVID-19 pandemic is impeding ticket revenue and severely affecting merchandising revenue. More recently, Barça had a gross debt of more than 1,400 million euros (1,670 million dollars) and a net debt of 488 million euros. The club agreed to a temporary cut in player salaries last year and delayed payments to players in December.
However, things have been looking good on the pitch recently: Under Dutch coach Ronald Koemans, the team won 13 of their last 16 league games and reached the final of the Copa del Rey. Laporta’s first game 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 accusations are of improper 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 testify 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.
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