"If you want to talk to Laporta you have to grab him by the lapel and take him to a corner"

BarcelonaFor a Barça executive or director to manage to get a minute of Joan Laporta at his disposal sometimes seems like a challenge as challenging as getting an audience with the Pope. When Laporta is not travelling to find investors or on a trip with Hansi Flick's team, he usually arrives at the Barça offices at Camp Nou between 11 and 12 in the morning. There are many people waiting for him who want to discuss matters related to the club. But it is not easy for them. "If you want to talk to Laporta in the offices you have to grab him by the lapel and take him to a corner," a person who has had to use this method to communicate the information he wanted told ARA.

"The alternative is to put yourself on a very long list of people who want to talk to him." This list is controlled by Manana Giorgadze, Laporta's right hand man inside and outside Barça. But it is Laporta who sets the priorities for his tasks. The lawyer has a ritual before he dedicates himself to the affairs of the club. He leaves his penthouse on Avenida Diagonal near Camp Nou at around nine in the morning and, thanks to the insistence of Enric Masip, deputy to the presidency, walks to the Europa Café to do some physical exercise before beginning the spiral of tasks of his day. This establishment, next to the Plaza Francesc Macià, is a regular meeting point for the inhabitants of the upper part of Barcelona. Laporta remains with part of his Barça Praetorian Guard and other people who belong to his most loyal personal and professional circle.

There, at the most visible table on the terrace when the weather is nice and on a leather sofa in front of a portrait of a chef inside the premises when the weather is bad, he chats without the intention of putting the world to bed. "It's a moment of relaxation for Laporta," a source from the top floor of Barça explains to this newspaper. Normally, informal conversations take place. The president ends them sometime before 11 and then goes up to his law office, Laporta & Arbós (avenida Diagonal, 469), to check if there is any private or work-related matter that requires his attention. Once the management is done, his personal driver, Edu, takes him to the offices of Arístides Maillol's Barça.

"What he does is quite inhumane"

"The president has a terrible schedule. He has meetings, receives people, deals with Espai Barça, human resources, communications... He acts as CEO. All of Barcelona and part of abroad ask him for visits. What he does is quite inhuman," says the same source. The various people consulted for this article agree that, when you meet Laporta in the corridors of the offices, he is rarely alone. "He is always accompanied by someone." They also agree when it comes to attributing to him an exhaustive knowledge of every detail of the club. "It can be considered a mistake for him to be a president who takes care of everything, but you cannot deny that he has the entire club in his head."

To gauge the degree of this knowledge of the club, the journalist asks if it is greater than that of Florentino Pérez about Real Madrid. "Yes, Laporta has more knowledge of Barça than Florentino Pérez about Real Madrid." Florentino from Madrid –he says with conviction–. When someone brings up issues in a certain area of the club, Laporta responds very specifically, although he is not obliged to know these details. Not even a CEO would have that. These are more typical knowledge of the director of that area," he adds. Laporta's meetings, encounters and visits to the offices are often interrupted by meals with boards of directors of rival teams if there is a Barça match during the week or by meetings, also around a table with food, with players' agents or potential investors. Then it is likely that he will spend time eating a chicken coquelette of Bresse in blanquette

Laporta rarely finishes his day at the Barça offices, which are currently an oasis in the remodeling of the Camp Nou, before eight in the evening. This, of course, if there is no fire. During the last days of 2024 and the first of 2025, the time to lower the shutter did not exist because the need to find urgent solutions to solve the inscriptions of Dani Olmo and Pau Victor They didn't allow it. Laporta has explained on occasion that with four hours of sleep he can face the next day with confidence. He hardly fulfilled them during that week that was the most serious crisis of his second mandate at Barça.

S'Agaró, the closest thing to a disconnection

The whirlwind of tasks continues at the weekend with trips to watch matches of the men's first team, which entail more lunches with other boards of directors. Laporta is a president who only refrains from travelling everywhere if prevented by a cause of force majeure. At the end of 2023, he suffered a thrombosis in one leg. The medical mishap forced him to rest and the place chosen to spend the first days of convalescence was s'Agaró, where he has a house that is his refuge to disconnect - so to speak - from Barça and the media noise.

There Laporta becomes Jan. The breaks for international matches and the summer are the times when it is most common to find him in this place on the Costa Brava. But it is not surprising that some unexpected event related to Barça makes him postpone, shorten or cancel his vacation. During the first part of the current season, a few days of rest in s'Agaró started later than planned because he gave priority to attending the funeral of the mother of a senior Barça official. "When it is necessary, he is there," says a person who has shared dozens of adventures with Laporta.