Barcelona president Joan Laporta is feeling the repercussions of his club not being able to register first-team players Dani Olmo and Pau Victor for the rest of the season.
As things stand, Spain playmaker Olmo and young striker Victor cannot play for Barca due to their registration issues. The Catalan side are still looking for a way to register the pair with La Liga and neither has publicly said they are looking to leave.
But the debacle has brought a renewed focus on the improvisational and secretive way Laporta’s board has dealt with the club’s deep financial problems in recent years — and how that could hamper the team on the pitch.
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It has also led to increased criticism of Laporta, with influential and high-profile socios (club members) — including some who would like to be president themselves — calling for consequences over that perceived mismanagement.
Opposition groups have raised the possibility of an official ‘motion of censure’ against the board. That would bring back memories of then-president Josep Maria Bartomeu’s ousting in 2020 after his popularity among the club-owning socios plummeted.
Here, The Athletic looks at how developments in the Olmo saga are affecting Laporta’s presidency, when motions of censure were previously taken and how things might develop from there.
Who is involved in the action against Laporta?
Recent days have seen many of the fan groups critical of Laporta’s policies come together in opposition — with many of the potential challengers in Barcelona’s next presidential election closely involved.
These groups were Compromissaris FCB, Dignitat Blaugrana, El Senyor Ramon, Seguiment FCB, La Resistencia del Palau, Si al Futur, Suma Barca, Som un Clam, Transparencia Blaugrana and Un Crit Valent.
Si al Futur is the campaign of Victor Font, who came second to Laporta in the club’s most recent presidential election in 2021 and criticised the “friends and family” way Barcelona are run in an interview with The Athletic last summer.
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Font is co-founder and chief executive of Delta Partners, a Dubai-headquartered financial technology consulting business bought by U.S. firm FTI Consulting in 2020, and a shareholder in Catalan media company Ara and football analytics company Kognia Sports Intelligence.
Som un Clam is headed by Joan Camprubi, the grandson and great-grandson of past Barca presidents, who has been clearly positioning himself to run for the position in the future. Camprubi was formerly Spain and Portugal regional manager at Boston Consulting Group, and is chief operating officer at global IT services firm Plain Concepts.
The other organisations involved comprise different groupings of Barca members. El Senyor Ramon is a think-tank promoting different ways of managing the club. Seguiment FCB is a grassroots movement which has supported the ‘Grada de Animacion’ (Supporters’ Stand) fans, who are currently not allowed into Barca’s temporary home ground at Montjuic due to a row with Laporta’s board.
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What have they said?
“We would like the club to operate in a planned and efficient way, the management to be excellent, for us to be leaders in many positive initiatives, for us to anticipate the future, because then we, the groups under signatories, would experience a different kind of Barcelonismo,” a statement from the groups released on Sunday read.
“But denying reality, thinking that things can change by spontaneous generation (of funds), is not part of a mature associative behaviour, and if we let ourselves go socially, we will end up losing everything we hold dear.”
The groups then explained in three steps what they were asking the board to do. This was where they raised the possibility of a vote of censure.
Coach Hansi Flick and Laporta at Barca’s 125th anniversary celebrations in November (Javier Borrego/Europa Press via Getty Images)
“We ask them to resign immediately,” they said. “If they do not want to resign because they consider that they have to listen to the members, they can still submit to a binding question of confidence.
“The non-reaction to our previous public proposals/petitions means that we do not rule out a second scenario, which is the activation of a vote of censure.”
What has led to this?
Opposition groups have issued individual statements disagreeing with the club’s management under Laporta for some time now, but two triggers have led to this latest collective action.
The first is the situation involving Olmo and Victor. Pending a final decision from the Spanish government’s Consejo Superior de Deportes (CSD — the highest sports institution in the country), neither can play for them again this season. A judge has twice turned down a temporary registration requested by Barca, while La Liga and the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) have stood firm in not allowing the club to re-register the pair.
That could mean Olmo and Victor being sidelined for the remaining months of the season. Neither would be able to be selected for Spain in that time either, given they would not have a playing licence.
The second trigger involves the club’s basketball team.
Thomas Heurtel played for Barca’s basketball team from 2017-2021 before an acrimonious exit (Alex Caparros/Getty Images)
Barca have been close to re-signing French player Thomas Heurtel in recent weeks — who played for them from 2017-21 but left in traumatic circumstances. In December 2020, Barcelona travelled to Istanbul to play Turkish team Anadolu Efes. They left Heurtel stranded at the airport, stopping him from taking the flight back to Catalonia after learning he was negotiating a potential free transfer to their arch-rivals Real Madrid.
Heurtel left for French side ASVEL instead in the February, but then signed for Madrid the following season. It seemed impossible he could return to Barca, but in recent weeks they have tried to convince him to rejoin as a replacement for Raul Neto. The opposition groups are critical of the idea of Heurtel coming back to the club.
They also have concerns over financial aspects of Barca’s Nike kit deal, and the unknown identities of those who have purchased VIP boxes at a revamped Camp Nou.
Has Laporta said anything?
Since the start of the Olmo and Victor debacle around this winter transfer window, Laporta has not made any public appearance or offered any reaction.
The club did not comment on the statement from the opposition groups or the rumours reported in the Spanish media that another group, led by former presidential candidate Jordi Farre, could put forward a motion of censure of the board this week.
Has this happened in the past?
Barcelona’s most recent previous president, Bartomeu, was forced out by a motion of censure presented by Farre in 2020.
Bartomeu was very unpopular with club members at the time. Years of financial mismanagement had seen Barcelona rack up debts of over €1billion ($1.03bn; £828m at current exchange rates). The team had been humiliated 8-2 by Bayern Munich in that August’s Champions League quarter-finals, played as one-off ties that season rather than over two legs because of logistical issues relating to the Covid-19 pandemic. Star player Lionel Messi had then tried to force an exit from the club using an infamous ‘burofax’.
Few expected Farre to collect enough signatures to trigger a referendum of the club’s more than 120,000 members. But the campaign gathered momentum as the team stumbled through the autumn of 2020 under coach Ronald Koeman. Other critics of Bartomeu offered support — Font helped organise sites around the city where fans could sign the motion.
Bartomeu resigned after he faced a motion of censure (Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images)
A 3-1 Clasico defeat at home against Real Madrid in the October proved the final straw, and Bartomeu and his directors accepted the inevitable and offered their resignations. Five months later, Laporta was re-elected for a second term as president.
Laporta has personal experience of motions of censure from both sides. In July 2008, after Barcelona finished the season trophyless and with the club in a troubled financial position, two disgruntled socios named Oriol Giralt and Christian Castellvi launched a motion against his presidency.
Despite Barca having won the Champions League just two years previously, 61 per cent (23,870) of the 39,389 socios who took part voted for the motion. Laporta and his board survived, as a two-thirds majority was required to remove them under club statutes. Eight directors resigned anyway, including current City Football Group chief executive Ferran Soriano. That summer saw Laporta appoint a young Pep Guardiola as first-team coach, and Barcelona won the treble the following season.
A decade previously, Laporta was a leader of the ‘elefant blau’ group of socios who challenged then-president Josep Lluis Nunez. Although Nunez survived that vote, with 62 per cent of 40,412 voters backing him, Laporta and many other figures from that group (including Soriano, Bartomeu and another former Barca president, Sandro Rosell) became identified with change and entered the club when Laporta was elected president for the first time in 2003.
(Top photos: Laporta, left, and Olmo; Getty Images)
