Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
Spanish football and European sporting giant, Barcelona, has reelected Mr Joan Laporta as its new president following a landslide poll on Sunday.
Mr Laporta, 58, won the election by more than 54 per cent of the vote over Mr Victor Font (29.99 per cent) and Mr Toni Freixa (8.58 per cent) to gain his second term at the helm.
The Catalan giant’s new helmsman was previously president during one of the club’s most successful periods; earning 12 trophies between 2003 and 2010. He was elected president of the club after winning the elections held in June 2003, and in the summer of 2006, he was re-elected as president of the club.
During the seven years of his presidency, the first team achieved two Champions Leagues, four league championships, a Copa del Rey, a Club World Cup, a European Super Cup, three Spanish Super Cups and three Spanish Cups.
It should be noted that the four professional sections of the club (football, basketball, handball and roller hockey) managed to proclaim themselves European champions under his presidency too.
He was instrumental in boosting the budget from €170 to €455.5 million and increased the club’s membership by 63.7 per cent from 106,135 to 173,701 members.
Mr Laporta signed several collaboration agreements with the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Acnur and promoted the opening of XICS centres (Xarxa Internacional de Centers Solidaris) all over the world through the FC Barcelona Foundation.
With the historic signing of the agreement with UNICEF, in New York, in September 2006, FC Barcelona undertook to collaborate financially with the association for the protection of children, and the first team would also wear its logo on the shirt. It was an unprecedented approach that reinforced the strategy of turning Barça into more than a club in the world.
After the period as president of Barça, Laporta decided to step into the world of politics and founded, in July 2010, Democràcia Catalana, a Catalan party, democratic, humanist, progressive and a defender of individual and collective human rights.
Joan Laporta was a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia from November 2010 to October 2012, and a councillor for the Barcelona City Council from May 2011 to May 2015.
Mr Laporta will take over from former president, Mr Josep Maria Bartomeu, who was among four ex-Barcelona officials recently arrested in a corruption probe by Catalan police.
Mr Bartomeu, after a troubled exit, has kept a low profile, having spent the night at a Catalan police station last weekend, after being detained along with current chief executive Messrs Oscar Grau, director of legal services Gomez Ponti, and advisor to president Jaume Masferrer.
