RONALDINHO: ANOTHER JOAN LAPORTA´S MISMANAGEMENT (This article is available in English and Español)

When we spoke about the Joan Laporta´s vote of confidence, we said that this man should resign because his management in FC Barcelona is horrible and the Ronaldinho Gaucho´s issue is another example of Laporta´s mismanagement.

I can not understand the change of Ronaldinho, since he was considered the best player of the world and he was acclaimed by the supporters, who consider now that Ronaldinho is as a mediocre player, ¿who is the responsible? It is clear, the FC Barcelona´s president, who, by the way, has shown that he has not dignity, because he decided to continue as president after the negative result of vote of confidence. Well, this is Laporta, an irresponsible and he is showing his “abilities” as president with the transfer of Ronaldinho to FC Barcelona´s rival AC Milan. Generally the persons, who know perfectly the problems or bad habits of the players- especially in this case- are the presidents, so ¿why did not Laporta sell Ronnie after the FC Barcelona´s Champions League title in Paris or perhaps people began to see “the Gaucho” in many parties from that championship?. A good manager would have done: to earn a lot of money with the transfer of the superstar and to start a new project financed by the sale of the superstar. If Joan Laporta had done this thing, FC Barcelona had had less problems, because since then we have practically been hearing the same song: If Ronaldinho was in the gym; If Ronaldinho was injured: If he was sick and he could not train; if he made a test of fatigue with a pathetic result; if Eto'o was angry with Ronaldinho; If Ronaldinho was injured but he was in a party, etc. So, we have heard a lot of rumours, whose consequence is clear: a devaluation of the player, being the president the ultimately responsible, since he took a very permissive and passive attitude-although some Spanish media, as the journalist of the Spanish Radio Intereconomía Toni Guerrero, said that he had an active attitude with the parties of players-with the players. I think that it was necessary discipline and punishments and besides to explain the real situation to the supporters in order to look for a reaction of the player and a change of his attitude. But FC Barcelona did not chose the correct way and now we have the result: a pathetic sale of 21 million euros (Gremio Porto Alegre and PSG will receive a portion of this sum of money)-FC Barcelona paid 32 million euros for Ronaldinho, so it is another “excellent” Laporta´s business, whose “ideal” is: to sell a player = to loss money, although in this case we have to say that Laporta had the “help” of Pep Guardiola, who devalued Ronnie, Eto'o and Deco, since he did not speak well about them-.
Anyway we do not understand the comments of the some Catalan media, since they say that it is a good deal, since it is very difficult to earn money to a player of 28 year´s old. Of course it is an absurd comment, because if we look at the history of the transfers, we can find some examples as Zidane -he was 29 year´s old when Real Madrid paid to Juventus 73.5 million euros (the Italian club earned 70 million euros), or the Ukrainian Andriy Shevchenko – when he was 30 year´s old, AC Milan sold him for 46 million euros, earning 23 million euros-or Marc Overmars- when he was 27 year´s old, Arsenal sold him to FC Barcelona for 40 million, earning 32 million-.Someone can say that these transfer were in other period, when clubs had a lot of money, but if we analyse the transfer of this season, we can see that the Ronnie´s transfer is a cheap transfer, since clubs are paying a lot of money for good players, but they are not famous football´s stars as Jo-Manchester City paid 24 million euros-or Amauri -Juventus paid 22.8 million for him-or Miralem Sulejmani-Ajax paid 16 million euros to SC Herenveen-or the back Bosingwa –Chelsea paid 20 million euros for him-.

In short, the Ronaldinho Gaucho´s transfer is another example of a poor planning and sincerely I do not like the 2008/09 FC Barcelona´s squad and it needs many new players to be a competitive team, because for the moment, FC Barcelona has signed defenders and players, who are similar to other players of the squad, ¿when will we see wingers? We will be attentive to the news and of course we wish good luck to Ronnie in his new Italian adventure.

Cheers,

J&F