2023-06-19 08:00:47
BarcelonaWhile the Barça basketball team was on fire due to the forced termination of Nikola Mirotic hours before the first match of the Endesa League final, Joan Laporta allowed himself to be photographed in Qatar. The Barça executive president was accompanied during this surprising weekend visit by two of the club’s managers with whom he has the most contact on a day-to-day basis. On the one hand, the head of women’s football, Xavier Puig, who in the private sphere has a working and friendly relationship with Laporta (they share a professional office in Diagonal in Barcelona); and, on the other, Joan Soler, manager in charge of training football who joined the board after the 2021 elections because he had the financial muscle to be able to deal with the endorsement. In the pre-campaign, he supported the pre-candidate Jordi Farré.
“It’s my first time in Qatar. I’m excited to be here with my friend Abdullah al-Attiyah. I’m visiting the city [Doha] with him. We walked around the mall, which is like a palace, and I really appreciate their friendship,” says Laporta in a video that has spread on social media. It is recorded on his mobile phone by Khalid Jassem, a very good sports journalist connected with the powers of the country, represented in this particular case by Al-Attiyah, chairman of the board of directors of Baladi Holding and strong man of one of the business divisions of the group, Baladi Express, which wants to be a reference in the trade digital in the Arab world. This Qatari businessman attended the Camp Nou market in Barça-Mallorca a few weeks ago, as he immortalized in a photo that was made public. Baladi, by the way, is a type of soft cheese which is eaten in the Middle East.
Already at that time, ARA consulted sources related to sponsorship negotiations if Laporta’s documented link with Al-Attiyah was related to any future agreement for Barça. The answer was that there was nothing concrete on the table, that the interest in the meeting coming to light depended mainly on the Qataris related to Baladi and that it is normal for people to take pictures with the Barcelona president when they visit the box office of Camp Nou. Days later, Laporta flew to Saudi Arabia with his former partner Pinhas Zahavi and the reaction from the club offices was that there was no commercial deal in place with Saudi money and that the trip was in response to a round of contacts in the Middle East.
This weekend, after the mentioned (and documented) visit of the president and two managers to Qatar, this newspaper has again asked Barça, which has insisted that meetings with Baladi Express emissaries and attendance at organized events for the company in Doha are part of the “private and professional” agenda of Laporta, Puig and Soler. The answer coincides with the absences of the director responsible for the commercial area, Juli Guiu, and the person in charge of the economic area, Eduard Romeu – who will now have more time to devote to Barça – on a trip that, according to the Qataris, serves to explore “future avenues of cooperation” with the Blaugrana club. Without Guiu or Romeu it seems difficult that this “cooperation” amounts to sponsorships. On the other hand, Barça could benefit indirectly from the agreements that Laporta, Puig and Soler negotiate in a personal capacity if, as advanced by RAC1 and culemaniathe board is obliged to guarantee six million euros to avoid sanctions from the League for breaching the budget of the sections.
The current Barcelona manager admitted that it was his first time in Qatar. And it’s true, because when the Sheikhs of Al-Sadd demanded their presence in Doha to negotiate the termination of Xavi Hernández, whom he had chosen to replace Ronald Koeman on the bench of the first team, he sent Rafa Yuste and Mateu German to do the relevant management.
Before this stand, there remains the tough position that Laporta exhibited towards the sponsorship of Qatar Sports Investment (QSI) that Sandro Rosell’s board approved in 2010, shortly after taking possession of the Barça government. “Let them explain to us what hidden pacts there are with Qatar!”, denounced the Barcelona lawyer in an interview with Jot Down in 2011. Later, in the 2015 election campaign, he confessed to suspicions that the deal with the emirate had “hidden interests” and that it was not uplifting to receive money from an “Islamic dictatorship”.
Finally in 2017 he went further in an interview with the Digital Nation: “I think Qatar has paid more than Barça has explained. If there is a president [Rosell] that in the exercise of his position he is accused of collecting illegal commissions and money laundering, could be the nexus of all this”. A reflection that led the club, then chaired by Josep Maria Bartomeu, to issue a statement of answer
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