FC BARCELONA: THE VOTE OF CONFIDENCE (This article is available in English and Español)

Today the vote of confidence against FC Barcelona´s president Joan Laporta is taking place. Those, who have followed us during the last months, know our critical position to the management of Laporta as president of this club, because we believe that it is very difficult to doing the things worse. However we believe that it is not a good option to hold a vote of confidence at this time, because the only thing that it is causing is more bad managements of the FC Barcelona´s president Joan Laporta during this period and whether the vote of confidence thrives, whether it does not thrive, the consequences are and will be negative for the club because:

1-It is very difficult that the vote of confidence thrives, since it requires an important participation and votes in favour of the Laporta´s dismissal, so I think that everything will continue to be the same on Sunday night and therefore Laporta will continue with his mismanagement. We saw important mismanagements during this period of the vote of confidence, since Laporta wanted to convince the supporters with news acquisition, but he paid a lot of money for these new players. The truth is that to sell and buy players during this period is a big mistake, because the sellers are take advantage of the moment of the weakness of the president and they are demanding a lot of money for just normal player, because they know that Laporta needs new faces and excuses to appear every day in the medias to campaign and to criticize the former FC Barcelona´s vice president Sandro Rosell, who will be a future candidate to be FC Barcelona´s president. If we look at the list of the acquisitions in the recent times is "impressive" because on the one hand FC Barcelona signed the inexperienced and arrogant coach and Pep Guardiola-we should remember that FC Barcelona´supporters did not want Guardiola when he was in the list of the candidate to be FC Barcelona´s president Lluis Bassat (it was incredible the Guardiola´s bet: the inexperienced Juanma Lillo as FC Barcelona´s coach…no more comment!!).

On the other hand, it seems that Joan Laporta is a president of an Italian team, because the club has only signed defensive players for next season, spending 77 million euros in defensives players like Gerard Pique-¿is it "good" to pay 5 million euros for a player, who was in your club 4 years and now he comes to FC Barcelona after an “important” experience with Manchester United, according some Catalans media? ¿is it an important experience to play 581 minutes in the Premier league and 252 in the Champions League? I do not think so, but if they want this player, ok, although I doubt that Piqué have a lot of minutes, since Pep Guardiola said during the presentation of Pique that he had many doubts about the personality of this player, which does not seem a good opinion about the player-or Martin Caceres-the catalan club paid 16 million euros for this central defender, who arrives to FC Barcelona after an “incredible” experience of 60 games in modest teams as professional and so at least one must be cautious and wait to see if Caceres will carry the Camp Nou´s pressure-, or the Brazilian Henrique, who arrives to Barcelona after a transfer of 10 million euros and an "amazing" experience in the Brazilian first division -but the supporters of FC Barcelona can be calm, because this player played with the Brazilian National team (1 game against Venezuela –Brazil lost this game,0-2-this is a typical practice of representatives and clubs to put up the price of the player-), or as the centre midfielder Seydou Keita ( Keita is a good player, but I think it is unnecessary to pay 14 million euros for a player of 28 year´s old, when you have in this position the immeasurable Yaya Toure-he is 25 year´s old and he arrived last season after 12 million euros-and Rafael Marquez, who can play perfectly in this position and he is only 29 year´s old). Besides, if it is not enough to have 3 defensive midfielders in the squad, FC Barcelona is also in talks with another more, the Sao Paulo´s player Hernandes, who possibly will be the new Fabio Rochemback-Hernandes played with the Brazilian National (26 minutes of the game between Brazil-Sweden).I do not understand these acquisitions, because I suppose that we will see only one of these player in the field, except that Pep Guardiola opts for a catenaccio´s tactical.

The other acquisitions are the Brazilian right back Dani Alves( this is a good player, specially in his offensive labour, although he had the estimable help from Jesus Navas during his period in Sevilla, which will not have in FC Barcelona, because the incompetent Txiqui Beguiristain -the sport director- does not sign a specific player for this position, so it is uncertain the performance of the Brazilian right back, who arrived to Barcelona after a transfer of 32 million euro-of course Sevilla FC ´s president, Mr Del Nido, took advantage of weakness and needs of Laporta-) and the goalkeeper Pinto, who is not a bad goalkeeper, but he is not having good luck in Barcelona, since he played 3 games last season and he received 8 goals!!(the truth is that if the incompetent Beguiristain wanted to sign a goalkeeper this summer, he should moved six months ago in order to sign a goalkeeper, whose contract ended last 30 of June as Edwin Var Der Sar or Tim Wiese or Igor Akinfeev-now all the teams want him after his good Euro-. I suppose that Beguiristain did not read our article of the 29 of October, where we talked about the best players, whose contract finished last June, where he can read players like the defenders Ujfalusi and Mellberg, or midfielders like Tim Borowski and Dani Carvalho, or forwards as Govou and Roman Pavlyuchenko-another famous player after the Euro-.Well, this is Beguiristain and Laporta, a synonym of mismanagement and poor planning.

But if we criticize the arrivals, what can we say of the sales. Clearly, we were in period of rebates, discounts and presents, because Laporta is giving away the assets of the club until this Sunday, since for example Edmilson, who cost 8 million Euros, leaves the club free; or Lilian Thuram cost 5 million and he leaves the club free; or Gianluca Zambrotta cost 14 million euros and now FC Barcelona sells this player for 8.5; or the promising Giovani dos Santos, who arrived to Tottenham Hotspurs after a transfer of 6 million euros- although this player was overvalued, I think it is questionable this FC Barcelona´s management, since Tottenham Hotspurs is paying a lot of money for normal players and for example it paid 12 million euros for the Brazilian goalkeeper Gomes and 12 million euros for the central defender Kabuol-; or Deco, who arrived to Chelsea after a transfer of 10 million euros (FC Barcelona paid 21 million euros for Deco) (it is clear that we must give a medal to Beguiristain, since it has “merit” to lose money when he transfers player to Chelsea- this situation also occurred when FC Barcelona sold Belletti to Chelsea last season, bravo!). Anyway, I must say that Beguiristain has not had much help in this transfer, since when Guardiola was presented as the new coach, he said that he did not want in the squad neither Deco, neither Ronaldinho nor Eto'o because they are not at their best level (I can not understand this comment, since now it will be very difficult to find an interested club for these players). Anyway, please do not say stupid arguments, as for example that Deco is a repaid player, because I suppose that Arsenal had more than repaid Henry, but he pulled out to FC Barcelona for 24 million euros-Arsenal paid 16 million to Juventus-. Besides Barça paid this astronomical amount for a player with a chronic back injury, so….. I suppose that the only reason of this sold was that the club needed money, since last Friday “the genius of finance and the Power Point”, the FC Barcelona´s vicepresident, Ferran Soriano, showed the club's accounts and the club wanted a surplus- coincidentally the surplus was of 10 million-.

In short, we should praise the work of the promoters of the vote of confidence-Oriol Giralt and Christian Castellví-, but as we see this vote of censure is producing negative consequences for the institution, because the president is wasting the assets of the club. 2-If the vote of confidence succeeds this Sunday, neither we sees a good future for FC Barcelona, because the club will be without president and directors during an important and long period of time and it will be impossible to buy or to sell a player during this period and therefore FC Barcelona will be another season without a championship, since the current squad is not very competitive.
So we believe that the vote of no confidence is and will be more negative than positive for FC Barcelona, whose supporters had to show more protest during the season to try to see a Joan Laporta´s resign and the arrival as president of Marc Ingla ( he is a vicepresident), who is a solvent and experienced businessman. We will see what is the situation in the next hours (we will know the result of the vote of confidence at 11 o´clock cet).

Cheers,

J&F