Barça is me, by Joan Josep Pallàs

in the movie The Apprentice (2024), by the extraordinary Danish-nationalized Iranian director Ali Abbasi, reviews the relationship between lawyer Roy Cohn and Donald Trump during the eighties and nineties, essential to understanding the future ideological and communicative drift of, once again, the next US president. In a sequence of the film, Cohn, in the middle of the indoctrination phase of his young and ambitious pupil, advises him the following: “Never admit that you are wrong, deny everything, do not recognize anything, attack, attack, attacks…” This advice, systematically applied today in the field of politics, especially from populism and its reborn capacity to recover the centers of power, is what, bridging the gap, we were able to recognize in the appearance of President Joan Laporta. Cohn, by the way, had previously been the executing arm of McCarthyism in the 1950s, a fanatical political persecution that socially and judicially purged intellectuals of the time for supposedly being communists. Dissent was not allowed. Either you aligned yourself with power or you were singled out and persecuted. Echoes vintage that resounded in the sports city.

Laporta yesterday divided Barcelona fans into good and bad, grouping the latter as enemies of the club for having criticized his management. He referred to an orchestrated campaign of organizations and media, evilly united to conspire against him. The exploitation of the concept of the powerful hidden and organized adversary is even older than the Nuñism that represented it so well; It alienates the faithful until it achieves a granite cohesion within their own ranks and is aggressive in the face of adversaries. Mourinho, in his years in Madrid, used it a lot on a sporting level. It usually more than fulfills the objective it seeks. For his irreducibles, Laporta was impeccable, brilliant, captivating… Lawyer Cohn, if he were alive, would have applauded with his ears. Barça is me, the Blaugrana president came to say, remembering Louis XIV: confusing monarch with State or president with club implies that those who disagree with one part actually seek the destruction of the whole. It’s not true, but the idea sticks.

“Never admit you’re wrong, deny everything, don’t acknowledge anything, attack, attack, attack…”

The way ideas are communicated today, when it is done so forcefully and aggressively, generates debate and distracts attention from the substance, which is actually what should concern us when these press conferences are offered. We discuss about the as when we should focus on the that .

Let’s go to that . What conclusions can be drawn from what Laporta stated for the purposes of information and transparency? Regarding large economic operations, nothing. About the return to the Camp Nou, crumbs. Regarding the investors in the VIP boxes, opacity. The objective of the appearance ended up being to create a new reality in which registering players, after almost four years in office, must be considered heroic.

The rest of the doubts remain unresolved. Of course, if we have finally discovered who Laporta’s Barça enemies are, we were also given the names of his friends. Namely, the television program The Chiringuito as a reference media ally; countries such as Qatar, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia as normalized partners for the business ; Darren Dein as head broker; and finally, Real Madrid as a traveling companion in the Super League who is implicitly thanked for not writing statements against the alleged favorable treatment of the CSD in the Olmo case and whose president Florentino we kissed on the cheek (it is not a metaphor) in Yida.

Let’s be fair. Laporta’s current mandate is an unquestionable success, the sponsorship agreement with Spotify and even more so his choice of Hansi Flick as coach, a decision that has had a spectacular impact on the club, reengaging the fans with their first team, in this case by winning the battles of what and how.

But let us also remember. Laporta, a few days after carrying out the motion of censure against President Núñez, said in The Vanguard that “nuñismo is characterized by an authoritarian and victimist way of doing things.” Today he would be chased by himself.