Nobody wants Laporta: the long list of escapes that highlight the president's loneliness

Joan Laporta has been left, in practice, alone in the face of danger. Xavi Hernández continues to lead Barça and this will be the case, apparently, until the end of this season, but the announcement of his goodbye takes him away from the focus. Now all the criticism, if the Barça first team is not able to straighten its battered sporting course, will point to Barcelona's top leader, whose new stage at the helm of the club is being much more turbulent than the one he experienced more than 20 years ago, when He took the helm for the first time.

The sporting and institutional crisis that finally gripped the club in a 2002-03 campaign that ended with the resignation of Joan Gaspart and the call for elections after Enric Reyna's brief time in the Barça chair is nothing compared to what it has now. same in hands. With the accounts still battered, a consequence of both the inheritance of Josep Maria Bartomeu's mandate and the pandemic, and under the inquisitive eye of justice due to the Negreira case scandal, rediscovering at least in part with sporting successes was the great plan of salvation. This was the case in a last campaign in which the team won the League and the Spanish Super Cup.

However, the wound still open due to the unexpected departure almost through the false door of Leo Messi and the kind of cat and mouse game with Florentino Pérez, ally in the creation of the Super League and at the same time enemy both in sports and in The courts are giving the Barça leader a bill that is very difficult to compensate at this time.. The first team is not accompanied by a good game, much less good results.. And the season, right now, seems like it will end in white. The truth, however, is that Laporta knows how to weather storms like no one else.. Since he regained control of the club, in March 2021, to tell the truth, he has experienced more disappointments than joys.. But, despite everything, his figure seems immovable. And the ground has been cracking under their feet for a long time.

DEPARTURES

The first blow, shortly after his victory in the elections, was the resignation of Jaume Giró, former director of the La Caixa Foundation, to join the board of directors as economic vice president to end up becoming Minister of Economy of the Generalitat.. Eduard Romeu, in this case, was in charge of finally taking over.. The second, meanwhile, was the resignation of its then general director, Xavier Reverter, in February 2022.. His duties, in this case, would be assumed directly by the president himself, who always has the advice of both Enric Masip, deputy to the presidency, and his former brother-in-law, Alejandro Echevarría, a figure who gained a lot of weight in the past. due to his close relationship with the players and that, to this day, he has no official connection with the entity.

In the sporting field there have also been a couple of notable exits. One of them, that of Mateu Alemany, the key man in many signings in this stage of Laporta in charge of the club, back and forth and back again.. That of Jordi Cruyff, for its part, was also symptomatic, given the president's own veneration for a Johan Cruyff to whom he always turned for advice and to whom he even named honorary president of the club.. The person now in charge of directing the sporting destinies of the entity is a Deco who, together with the now coach of the reserve team, Rafa Márquez, and the Cameroonian Samuel Eto'o, among others, explicitly lent his support in the 2021 elections.. It is now in their hands to determine who will finally be the replacement for Xavi who, in fact, arrived at Barça after overcoming some initial reluctance (always denied) by the current president.

That year, 2021, was terribly turbulent. In August, Leo Messi's departure from the club was made official.. At the end of October, Ronald Koeman, after Barça lost to Real Madrid at the Camp Nou and was also beaten by Rayo in Vallecas, was finally fired and Sergi Barjuan provisionally took the reins of the team.. Everyone's big favorite to become the new coach was Xavi. Of all, except for a Laporta whose relationship with him had cooled in the previous months. Contact, however, was resumed, thanks also to the intervention of Echeverría, and the one from Terrassa was finally officially announced as the new coach on November 6, 2021. On Saturday, 812 days later, he put an expiration date on his position, leaving Laporta, who is also surrounded by rumors about his state of health, in a very uncomfortable position, with only him as the parapet of a club mired in a deep crisis all levels. Accused by his critics of surrounding himself with friends who do not disagree with him and who do not correct his mistakes, the president has just lost the last network that stabilized him.