Barça facing the ballot boxes

Considering how much the world of professional football has changed, it's no small feat to have reached 2026 and for members to be able to vote in democratic elections for the Barça presidency. With this joy in mind, let's talk.

Joan Laporta's presidencies have aged poorly. Just compare the gazpacho night with the Eintracht Frankfurt defeat. Or the enthusiasm for recruiting members...The great challenge With the mistreatment of season ticket holders on the way up to Montjuïc, when the board announced a doubling of seat prices and, seeing the failure, halved them. Not forgetting the members' nomadism, moving up and down the stands for seats that haven't always been the best available. We've seen the expulsion of the supporters' section, the online assemblies, and the refusal to vote by mail. And the calling of elections before the titles were decided and in the middle of a Champions League knockout round, with the intention of keeping it low-profile, and with an outgoing president basking in Flick's achievements and protected by the digital guard.

Laporta was key to achieving the best Barça in history. In 2010, I opined that the legal action brought against him wasn't seeking justice but revenge, and that this did a lot of damage to the club. But now there are more than enough reasons for members to wonder if they've had enough of the dissonance between what he says and what he does, like when he claimed he was the most capable candidate to bring Messi back and ended up making him cry in front of everyone, dismissing him through the back door, and now promising a statue as a form of reparation.

Barça is more than a club, and democracy is a fragile system. It hasn't been easy to preserve either. That's why members must be demanding and not go to the polls thinking that a collective endeavor like Barça depends on a single person.