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.

Contents 1 Career at FC Barcelona 2 First season in charge 3 Arrival of Frank Rijkaard 4 Scandals and criticism 5 Re-election as club president 6 Vote of No Confidence 7 References

Career at FC Barcelona

He started his career with F.C. Barcelona leading the "Elefant Blau" (Blue Elephant), a group which opposed former president Josep Lluís Nuñez and which, in 1998, tried, unsuccessfully, a vote of no confidence against him.

In the 2003 elections, Laporta didn't start as the favourite, but his charisma grew during the electoral campaign and he finally won against the expected victor, publicist Lluís Bassat, in part because of a widely published (and ultimately unfulfilled) promise to bring David Beckham to Barcelona. Laporta quickly became a media star, even more than some of the players.

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.

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 the 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.

Scandals and criticism

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 having changed for the worse as a person, having adopted authoritarian traits and harbouring ambitions of power.

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. 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 celebrations of the 2005-2006 Liga championship.

Laporta's own political history added to the complications surrounding the Echevarría scandal. Laporta is a self-described Catalan nationalist and has been identified on several occasions as supporting the independence of Catalonia from Spain. In the early 1990's, he and fellow Catalan politicians Pilar Rahola and Ángel Colom founded the now-defunct "Partit per la independencia" which openly supported Catalan separatist ideology.^[1] He was also an active participant at the controversial Frankfurt Book Fair of 2007 which featured Catalan language and culture. At the fair, Laporta stated that "he hopes that FC Barcelona continues to be a tool to promote the Catalan language and culture" and to the contrary, he would feel obligated "to create the Catalan Republic of FC Barcelona".^[2]

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. ^[3]

The elections were to be held on September 3, 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 pre-candidate received the 1,804 signatures required to stand as a candidate.

Vote of No Confidence

The poor results of the sports' sections, especially those of the section of football, together with serious concerns about his leadership style, resulted in a censure motion which took place on 6 July 2008 and was led by Oriol Giralt. Exit polls showed that 60.60% of the 39,389 votes cast voted against Laporta. However, even though he lost the popular vote, the necessary 66% to have new elections was not achieved.

Following the results, it was speculated that Laporta would resign due to pressure from fellow directors. This would have resulted in then vice-President Albert Vicens taking over from Laporta with Ferran Soriano replacing Vicens as the main vice-president.^[4] However these rumours were quickly dismissed by Laporta. On 10 July 2008, eight of the seventeen board members - vice-presidents Albert Vicens, Ferran Soriano and Marc Ingla, and directors Evarist Murtra, Toni Rovira, Xavier Cambra, Clàudia Vives-Fierro and Josep Lluís Vilaseca - resigned following Laporta's confirmation that he will stay as President of the club despite the opinion of the members. In a press statement, they revealed that they resigned due to "discrepancies in the way to act after the result of the motion."

Preceded by Joan Gaspart

President of FC Barcelona 2003–present

Succeeded by Incumbent

References

1. ^ http://www.marca.com/edicion/marca/futbol/1a_division/barcelona/es/desarrollo/1108838.html
2. ^ http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/10/10/espana/1192038357.html
3. ^ Reuters: Judge orders Barcelona to hold presidential election
4. ^ Sport.es Laporta dimitirá el jueves