"We need the elections to be a plebiscite between the Barça of the past and the Barça of the future." Víctor Font's mantra for the past few weeks has finally become a reality: as Barça announced this Thursday, Marc Ciria obtained 2,247 valid member signatures but did not reach the threshold of 2,337. Therefore, the incumbent Joan Laporta (7,226 valid signatures) and candidate Font (4,440) will face off on March 15. This Monday, Ciria submitted 2,844 signatures at the Auditori 1899, 598 more than those validated in the final count. The signature validation process was much more unforgiving than expected: while approximately 6% of signatures are typically lost, Marc Ciria saw 21% of his signatures discarded. Joan Laporta has lost 944 signatures, 11% of those submitted, and Víctor Font, 704 (14%).

Pending official confirmation, Joan Laporta will face two rivals in the FC Barcelona presidential elections on March 15. The deadline for submitting the 2,337 valid signatures required to qualify for the election closed this Monday, and in addition to the incumbent, who obtained 8,171 signatures, Víctor Font (5,144) and Marc Ciria (2,844) also reached the minimum threshold. Xavier Vilajoana (1,593) is therefore out of the running, as was the case in the 2021 elections. The other two pre-candidates, Daniel Juan (84) and William Maddock (9), played only a minor role.

After two frantic weeks searching high and low for signatures, the pre-candidates for the Barça presidency are scheduled to meet this afternoon at Camp Nou to submit their supporting endorsements. They need 2,337 valid endorsements to officially become candidates. Polls, surveys, and general sentiment suggest that Joan Laporta, who is running for re-election, will by far submit the most. The question is how many endorsements his opponents will submit, starting with Víctor Font, who should be second in this ranking, followed by... Marco Ciria and Xavier Vilajoana, who are working until the last minute to try to make the cut. The other two pre-candidates, Daniel Juan and William Maddock, are expected to play only a symbolic role.

Marc Ciria Roig (Barcelona, ​​1979) is one of the most active voices in the Barça environmentThis financier audited Josep Maria Bartomeu's management and has done the same for Joan Laporta, whom he voted for in the last elections. Disappointed with the Barcelona lawyer's lack of transparency and presidential style, he now leads Movement 42 and is in the final stretch of efforts to become a full-fledged candidate for the March 15 elections.

Marc Ciria officially launched his Movement 42 on Tuesday. The Barcelona-based financier, very active in recent years in economic and institutional analyses of the presidencies of Josep Maria Bartomeu and Joan Laporta, is leading a new pre-candidacy to turn the page on the club's governance. His main asset is the "real solutions" that he and his team have presented in recent months to "generate cash" during a time of economic vulnerability and... fair play Exceeded and in order to monetize digital assets, one of the pending issues in the world of top-level football.

If Joan Laporta and Marc Ciria were to step out onto the balconies of their offices on Barcelona's Diagonal Avenue, they could greet each other and even be close enough to converse despite the background noise of the bustling city life. The Barça president's law firm, Laporta & Arbós, is located at 469 Diagonal Avenue, and Ciria, one of the most active members of the opposition and a potential candidate in next spring's electionsThe headquarters of Diagonal Asset Management, a company specializing in financial asset management, is located at 467 Diagonal Avenue. Both are a two-minute walk from Plaça Francesc Macià, the epicenter for years of breakfasts, coffees, and lunches centered around Barça.

Despite the 17 million losses that Barça has had in the 2024-2025 financial year, which entail a total of 230 million in accumulated losses during Joan Laporta's term in office.The virtual meeting of delegate members, as expected, was a breeze for the Barça president. The delegate members (only 553 of the 4,641 summoned voted) approved the accounts with 412 votes in favor, 84 against, and 31 blank votes. They also approved the budget for the 2025-2026 season, with an expected income of 1.075 billion euros and profit of 5 million euros (506 members voted), with 418 votes in favor, 55 against, and 21 blank votes.

Let's be honest. If you go out on the street and ask Barça fans about the meaning of BLM, many will think it might refer to the initials of some players. It's the old rule of thumb: what matters most to fans is scoring goals and winning titles. As the club grows and world football globalizes and becomes a den of global wolves where it's hard to compete, it's hard to follow Barça news off the pitch. It's become filled with technical terms and anglicisms.

For the second time in Barça's history, the club's members are close to adding an item to the meeting's agenda. Businessman Víctor Font did so in 2019. with the initiative of electronic voting and the financier Marc Ciria He may have succeeded in doing so by requesting the revocation of the permission that the assembly granted in 2022 to Joan Laporta's board to sell up to 49.9% of BLM (Barça Licensing & Merchandising), Barça's merchandising division, valued at around €600 million. According to the statutes, Ciria needed the support of at least 3% of members with the right to passive suffrage. This meant around 3,300 signatures. Finally, he collected 3,316 notarized signatures after almost a month of collecting them, as he himself explained this Tuesday at the Can Déu Civic Centre in the Les Corts neighborhood of Barcelona.

The offices of financier Marc Ciria (Barcelona, ​​1979) and lawyer Joan Laporta are only a few meters apart on Barcelona's Avinguda Diagonal, next to Plaça Francesc Macià. This physical proximity is inversely proportional to the distance that separates them in their views on Barça's management. Ciria is in the midst of collecting signatures for the initiative "Stop the Sale of BLM." The goal is to gather the necessary 3,500 signatures (they have more than 2,000) that would dedicate an item on the agenda of Barça's general assembly on October 19 to discuss the future of the club's trading, the asset that generates the most money off the pitch. Ciria speaks to ARA in his office at Diagonal Asset Management, a company of which he is a founding partner and executive president.

Although the active Laporta sector on social media often points to Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, as the main culprit for Barça's woes (not least due to the difficulty in registering players in the last transfer window), sources close to President Laporta himself assure ARA that the current relationship between the Catalan club and La Liga "is good." The person in charge of keeping the news in Madrid is Alejandro Echevarría, the unofficial vice president of Barça, but "Jan also has a good relationship with Tebas because he wants the best for the club," they make clear.