Joan Laporta
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Joan Laporta i Estruch (born June 29, 1962 in Barcelona, Spain) is the president of Futbol Club Barcelona since 2003.
Laporta is a lawyer (graduated from UB) with his own firm, Laporta & Arbós, which has important firms as clients. Laporta is married to Constanza Echevarría and has three sons.
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[edit] Career at FC Barcelona
He started his career with F.C. Barcelona leading the "Elefant Blau" (Blue Elephant), a group who opposed former president Josep Lluís Nuñez and who, in 1998, tried, unsuccessfully, a vote of no confidence against him.
In the 2003 elections, Laporta didn't start as a favourite, but his charisma grew during the electoral campaign and he finally won against the favourite candidate, publicist Lluís Bassat, in part because of a widely published (and ultimately unfulfilled, though not for want of effort) promise to bring David Beckham to Barcelona. Laporta quickly became a media star, even more than some of the players.
[edit] First season in charge
His first season (2003/2004) as President would prove to be a watershed for the club, but not without initial instability. The club situation was one of bitter unhappiness and disappoinment amongst both fans and players after the club failed to meet their own standards to match Real Madrid's success in the early 2000s, having not won trophies since 1999.
[edit] Arrival of Frank Rijkaard
With Laporta's arrival, and that of football superstar Ronaldinho (his solution signing after Beckham's decision to turn down the club) as well as new manager Frank Rijkaard among others, the club was forced to embark on a new phase, having elected a new, young and largely untested managerial board along with him. Laporta also decided to fight against violence in the Camp Nou stadium, specially from the Boixos Nois (Mad Boys) gang, and faced insults and death threats from them. Police investigation revealed they had planned on kidnapping him. To exacerbate the situation, the 2003/04 season began abysmally results-wise, with Laporta constantly having to call for fans' understanding and patience with him and Rijkaard as the club slowly phased out underachieving players from the old guard in order to rebuild a new look side around Ronaldinho.
Laporta also had to spur his board to foster creative business ideas to raise revenue, and in recent years, that new style of management has eventually succeeded in turning around the fortunes of the club with the team spectacularly returning to form and finishing second after being at the bottom of the table in 2003/2004, and then finally managing to win La Liga titles both in 2004/05 and in 2005/2006. Today, the inherited massive financial debt is being cut down, and only two players remain from the original team that did not win a major title in six years with players like Deco, Eto'o and Edmilson as the new starlets, around a core of home grown players like Carles Puyol, Xavi, Víctor Valdés and Oleguer Presas. With the end of the 2005/6 season, Barcelona currently has preserved a healthy lead over their arch-rivals Real Madrid for the second consecutive season, and finally won the UEFA Champions League on May 17 2006, for only their second time in history.
[edit] Scandals
Nonetheless, Laporta's management of the sports sections of the club, especially the basketball one, has been controversial. On June 2, 2005, he faced the resignation of five members of the club's board of directors including Sandro Rosell. They accused him of not being the same person anymore, of being authoritarian and having power ambitions.
On October 2005, he faced a new scandal, when his brother-in-law and member of the board of directors in charge of security, Alejandro Echevarría, was revealed to be a member of the Francisco Franco Foundation, which stands for the complete opposite of what Barça stands for in Catalonia. After several denials by Echevarría and Laporta, replied by documents shown by a former member of the board of directors, Laporta was finally forced to accept Echevarría's resignation. Echevarría is still, however, close to the club and he organized the security during the recent celebrations of the 2005-2006 Liga championship.
[edit] Re-election as club president
There was some discussion about when exactly Laporta mandate started, with the board of directors holding one opinion and the opposition another. One club member went to the court and, on 19 July 2006 a judge ruled that the first eight days of his presidency in June 2003 counted as the first year of his four year term. His term has therefore expired and new elections have been called. [1]
The elections were to be held on September 3rd, 2006, but it turned out not to be necessary. On August 22, FC Barcelona confirmed Joan Laporta's Presidency for another 4-years after no other candidate received the 1,804 signatures required to run for the FC Barcelona Presidency.[2]
| Preceded by Joan Gaspart |
President of FC Barcelona 2003–present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
