An unprecedented ridiculous, by Joan Josep Pallàs

Except for an unexpected script change (Spanish football offers that and more, but this time it’s hard to believe), Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor will not be able to play the second half of the season with FC Barcelona. LaLiga has cleared up doubts this morning, the first of the year 2025, by deleting both players from its lists, unregistering them and making it clear that the desperate move of the Barça club to request licenses for its two victims from the Spanish Football Federation has not moved the least to Javier Tebas. The president of LaLiga, to make matters worse today vice president of the Federation, came away scalded by the bad experience of Barça Studios (Laporta promised and did not deliver) and has not considered the documentation provided by the club to be complete or sufficiently reliable, in this case in relation for the advanced sale of a percentage of the VIP boxes of the future Spotify Camp Nou stadium.

The episode causes embarrassment. FC Barcelona signed Dani Olmo last summer for a figure close to 50 million euros and six months later they could lose the player and that million due to their own incompetence. The ball is in the court of Olmo, a Eurocup star who is faced with two options: stay six months without playing but continue at Barça until 2030 or accept any offer from the best clubs in Europe that would match or improve his salary. and they would add a signing bonus to being able to leave free. A sweet treat for any player, but a dilemma for those in question, since he grew up at La Masia and with his return he fulfilled a dream that the board has been determined to frustrate. We will see.

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The situation is unprecedented for Barcelona and represents a reputational blow with unpredictable consequences, both sporting (how to explain to Hansi Flick that he is losing one of his best footballers, in addition to Pau Víctor, Lewandowski’s circumstantial replacement?), and economic. , institutional and also social. Regarding this last section, assuming that, as is usual, no one on Laporta’s board assumes the consequences of his actions and his unfulfilled promises, it is difficult to anticipate the response of some partners who have long been voiceless and misplaced (in Montjuïc and without knowing when will return to the Spotify Camp Nou), as well as an opposition that has until now been afraid to take decisive steps.

Laporta’s biggest botch

The episode causes embarrassment. Barça signed Olmo as a big star last summer and six months later they could lose him

This time Laporta will have few arguments to defend his botch. Olmo already stopped playing two games at the beginning of the season for economic reasons, so five months have passed without anyone in offices full of friendly people with dubious talent for the assigned functions having been able to find a slow and calm solution. planned. The refrain of the persecution of the organizations based in Madrid not only does not filter this time but also goes back to the times in which victimhood served as a multipurpose threadbare to cover up each one’s own mistakes, those that, according to Joan Laporta, were either like ‘ elefant blau’ or later as the author of the banner “I want to see you again”, undermined the greatness of a club that had to act without complexes to progress. Today that club once again smells of the mothballs it is so hated, governed with a mixture of opacity and incompetence that results in management under suspicion.

The sporting consequences

How to explain to Hansi Flick that one of his best footballers has been taken away from him?

Contradiction accompanies every movement and the solution, when it arrives, is late and poorly the result of improvisation. The Olmo case responds to a methodical-chaotic application of these disastrous parameters. To try to fix it, in 48 hours they went from asking in vain for precautionary measures in two judicial instances to considering a personal guarantee (Laporta and the treasurer Ferran Oliver are the richest members of the board) in case the advance sale of the VIP boxes of an unfinished stadium. Everything against the clock. In the end, with the sound of the end-of-year bells about to ring, LaLiga’s refusal came through a statement that, when read, marked the start of the Barcelona year in silence and without triumphant bells. What a club.

Laporta’s proposal in the form of a new lever did not arrive on time this time. He will probably do it throughout January, but barring a miracle, not in time to save Olmo. What does it consist of? The mechanics are the usual: a new amount of money taken from the future and (rule number one of business: sell something in a hurry and look in a hurry and you will undersell it) a poorly resolved business opportunity. Whether the buyers are from Dubai doesn’t matter, the flag of ethics that Laporta waved so much when Qatar entered the club today accepts any monetary currency as a moral logo.

The Barça of the virtuous circle languishes. Laporta has not made us forget Bartomeu despite how simple it was. The millions left over to pay commissions (the new year has been wonderful for Darren Dein) are missing for corrective income. Fantasies are defeated by truth. Messi is in Miami, Barça Studios, the golden goose, was last seen running down Diagonal fleeced and without suitors, and Dani Olmo thinking about where he has gotten himself.

About basketball, if that, we’ll talk another day.