Joan Laporta may well be the favourite to win Barcelona’s presidential elections, but Lionel Messi’s influence is causing him problems.
Laporta guided Barca through the most successful period in their history from 2003 to 2010 before returning in 2021 for another stint with the club in dissaray.
Laporta can certainly make a strong argument that he helped the club recover from his predecessors, but others will point to Messi as why he was so successful in the first place.
The 63-year-old has had to step down in order to run again, hoping to continue his time at the club, and now his rivals are on attack mode.
Aside from pointing out Barca’s staggering debt, they’re using Laporta’s kryptonite against him in the form of Messi.
Upon the Catalan’s return in 2021, he was the man behind Messi’s infamous teary departure to PSG.
Laporta continues to argue he had no choice in the matter due to the club’s finances, while his rivals claim otherwise, and seemingly so does Messi.
How Lionel Messi turned against Laporta
Now at Inter Miami, Messi has avoided a return to Barca with Laporta in situ, most famously returning to the Camp Nou in the middle of the night without the club’s permission.
His detractors have now used that against him, with one erecting a banner promising his return.
Another leading rival, Victor Font, has now gone even further, commenting at a campaign event: “We’ve been working for 2-3 years on what Messi’s return should be like.
“Seeing the best in history in the PSG shirt really hurt the Barça fans. Leo’s values reflect who we are as Barça fans.
“Committed, a leader, honest and who loves Barça very much. He is the best-known face of Barça fans. We have proposed that he be the honorary president of the club.”
Laporta tried to firefight against Lionel Messi
Such stories have led to Laporta needing to firefight the Messi flame, both in person and in his newly released book.
In This Is How We Saved Barça, he wrote: “During negotiations for his contract extension, his entourage was very demanding, and although his father was more understanding, his relatives gave the opposite impression.
“We had found a bold solution: a long-term contract with an initial period as a Barça player, followed by a loan to an MLS team, which seemed to circumvent LaLiga’s regulations.
“But LaLiga told us to abandon the idea and that we had to sign an agreement for the sale of a percentage of the television rights for fifty years through a fund called CVC.”
He then recalled attempts to sign Messi upon his PSG departure.
He wrote: “Jorge Messi (his father) came to my house, I prepared the contract, I sent him a draft, and he didn’t reply.
“A week went by, then two… A month later, he finally came back to my house and told me that they had decided to join Inter Miami , where he would be under less pressure.”
In another interview, Laporta recalled the moment he realised his relationship with Messi was completely broken.
“They tried to force us to sign a 50-year agreement with CVC [investment management company] to register Leo. We couldn’t do it,” he said.
“The club has to come before names. That’s what saddened me the most, and these are difficult decisions we have to make. If we renewed, we wouldn’t be able to afford his salary.
“The reality is that our relationship isn’t what it used to be. He refused to greet me at a Ballon d’Or gala. Our relationship has been damaged, but I respect what Messi decides to do.”
Try as he might, the Messi questions won’t go away for Laporta, and for his rivals, it could be the perfect ploy to topple ‘the man who saved Barca’.
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