Joan Laporta: There's an orchestrated campaign to take Barca

Barça president Joan Laporta has analysed Barça's situation on the TV3 programme 'El fator clau'.

Laporta was hard on La Liga, denouncing a campaign to discredit the club in order to take over its ownership and he has defended the current ownership system.

These are Laporta's key statements:

Negreira case

"The Negreira case is a campaign against Barça. We have to be self-critical, but it was something we inherited. Having refereeing advice is not a crime. Barça has never bought a referee, apart from the fact that perhaps we did not value sufficiently what it meant that the son of a former referee gave us advice. This has gone out of control, because there is an orchestrated campaign to take over Barça, to transform Barça into a SAD".

Attack on La Liga and Tebas

"The Negreira case is linked to the fact that we have not signed with CVC, fortunately, because it mortgaged Barça for 50 years. It is a fund that has kept 10.95 percent of the clubs' television rights. It was still a loan. We didn't see that it was an operation that could be of interest to us. Needing as we were to save the club, what we did was to sell 25 percent of our television rights for 686 million and that saved the club. It hasn't fixed it, because we still have an operating deficit of 200 million that we are attacking with an austerity plan, but what we didn't see was the contract with CVC".

"One of the conditions was that Tebas would stay, first for 15 years and then for eight. His salary is double that of bank presidents. We were told that if we did this deal he would give us fair play, 15 percent. We were told that if we didn't sign we couldn't sign or they would make it more difficult for us. This is in court. We said no and they gave us the cross. You come to the conclusion that Catalonia can be within the state, but even so, some cannot digest the elements that define our Catalanness. They can't digest that one of the elements of Catalanness is Barça and they try by all means to keep it for themselves. So, the lords of La Liga, those of CVC and other established powers want this, but they should know that they will have us defending Barça's interests to the last drop of our blood. We do this because we love Barça".

The club must belong to the members

"It's good that Barça is not a SAD, because that makes us belong to the community. Barça belongs to the city, to the country, obviously to its members and that allows us to do many things that other clubs cannot do. Barça is Cruyff-Masia-Catalunya-Unicef. You can understand Cruyff as a genuine way of playing football. You can understand La Masia as the dream factory of those kids who want to make it to the first team. As for Catalonia, you cannot separate Catalanness from democracy and Barcelonismo is indissoluble from those two concepts. And Unicef illustrates that Barça has a social commitment to values. That is more befitting of an association like Barça than a commercial company.

Criticism of the management of Rosell and Bartomeu

 "When Qatar link was set up, I thought it was a big mistake, because we have to respect the essence of the club and it doesn't belong to our essence. And that's how it was. It didn't go well, because it led to the Qataris themselves signing Neymar for 220 million euros. It made people here react badly to the management of that money".

"We also found good things in this second phase. The women's team was good and we took advantage of that to win the Champions League. It's a credit to the previous board and to our board for making two historic attendance records. It was spectacular and it makes me proud to be the president of Barça. We have a team that wins and we all like to win, but they also do it by playing well".

The virtuous circle

"Football has a very powerful emotional factor. It is different from any business. For the rest it is not so different. You also invest, in this case in players, in facilities and in the virtuous circle, investing in players makes the members and fans become attached to the club, they consume the club and the economy is strengthened to invest in football again".