2023-10-07 19:50:51
In 2002, with Gaspart as president, Madrid beat Barça in a classic in which Figo scored for the whites. Kubala had just died. It seemed to me that with that set of calamities we were definitely in the pit and as a result I became a member of Barça.
I make this introduction to explain an opinion that is certainly unpopular and in which I do not find company: I would not mind if Barça were a joint-stock sports company, with real shareholders, companies or tycoons. That’s all I care about: real owners, that money is at stake and that they look out for their interests.
As a journalist, I closely attended the monumental theft festival that was the robbery of the Palau de la Música. Convergència, Ferrovial and one of the famous 400 families turned a Catalan cultural institution with history and global projection into a den of infamy. I want to remember that Millet went so far as to buy a submersible remote control with funds from the organization to watch television comfortably from the bathtub that had been made at the Palace. He did so much. Whatever he stole, because deep down he was stealing from all of us, the truth is that he wasn’t stealing from anyone.
Do they want us to talk about the fall of savings banks? Historical entities, useful, with social works of incalculable value. They fell one after the other due to poor management in some cases, kleptomania in others. At Caixa Catalunya, I remember them, they gave one-hour courses to the directors to explain to them what that was all about, that was the level. The unfortunate Miguel Blesa turned the imposing Caja Madrid into an Ali Baba cave with Ferraris, caviar and cards black. Alas, the boxes are gone. A drama, but because they belonged to everyone, they belonged to no one.
I think about it a lot when I remember the pornographic parade of disasters that Bartomeu perpetrated at Barça, in which he made those wild contracts out of Neymar’s money. In the choice of profiles to lead the club, the reproach can certainly also be made to Laporta. Bartomeu was fine with hiring companies based in a caravan in Uruguay to insult his players. We’ll wait to see what justice has to say, of course, but until that happens, a clarification: that wasn’t an insult to anyone, because it was an insult to everyone.
Would a real owner accept that scandals and infamy of this magnitude were committed in his club? No, never, that’s why I think being a sports limited company would be good. I already understand that we would lose one of the key distinguishing features of the club. But perhaps we would shield the rest: his Catalanness, his commitment to human rights, to the sections, to women’s football, to the attacking game that gave birth to Cruyff. Three letters, S, A and E, would shield us from the titanic incompetence and insatiable greed that managers, human as they are, tend to exhibit in places that, because they belong to everyone, belong to no one.
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