Joan Laporta maintains total confidence in Xavi Hernández, he hopes that the players will go out on Sunday to demonstrate their quality at the Bernabeu and admits that the club is working to make incorporations in the winter market. Two days after the continental blow against Inter, the Barcelona president wanted to come to the fore to try to raise the spirits of Barcelona fans.
“We maintain intact confidence in Xavi and in the project. Xavi knows the club and the Barça system perfectly. He is a great coach and as a person he is excellent. He will get better and give us a lot of success”, Laporta said in an interview on Barça TV. The leader also asked the public to “continue to believe and give full support to the coach, who needs it.” Laporta confessed that he spoke with the coach after Wednesday’s game in the coach’s office and that he also spoke this Friday with the Terrassa coach.
The president broke a spear for the team. “We have brought in very good players and we have a competitive squad, but one that is still under construction and in a period of adjustment. We will continue to make adjustments.”
In this sense, he did not hide that the club thinks of making signings in January. “This team is still being made, there have to be adjustments to make it even better. We are working for the winter market, with the intention of constantly improving the first team to make it more powerful and better.
Despite this positive tone, Laporta acknowledged that these days have not been easy at all. “We didn’t expect the blow of the game against Inter because both the club and the technical secretariat and the coach made a lot of efforts this summer to have a competitive team”. Laporta pointed out that the Barça team, “as seen in Munich”, can compete with the greats and recalled that arbitrations have harmed the team in the Champions League. “But we also should have scored goals in Munich and Milan.”
The more than probable elimination in Europe will have its economic consequences. “We have talked about it in the executive committee and it will not be 30 or 35 million but we will try to compensate what we stop earning with other sponsorships or marketing products. I think the impact will end up being less than that amount because we will continue to compete in Europe as well.”
Now comes the classic and Laporta asked Barcelona to forget the Champions League, at least until the elimination is over. “The main objective of the season was and continues to be the League. The classic is a great opportunity for this team to claim and remake itself. We have to show that we have the capacity to react and I hope that the players go out with the spirit of getting up”. The leader believed that whoever wins the classic “will be very reinforced and whoever loses will be touched.” Laporta expects a Barça like the one he won last year at the Bernabeu and was pleased to have attended major Barcelona matches at the Whites’ fiefdom as president.
Regarding his relationship with the captains, Laporta stated that it is “good, correct, with confidence to talk about anything”. Before the whistles to the veterans of a sector of the fans, the president recalled that they are footballers “who deserve all the respect and admiration for everything they have represented and represent within Barça.”
Asked about the future of Messi, Laporta came to say that now it is not time to talk about it but he did promise a tribute and recognition “to the best player in our history”. Thus, he stressed, for example, that this Sunday marks the 18th anniversary of Messi’s debut with the first team, with a friendly in Porto, and slipped that the club will privately send him a commemorative gift. On Monday the faces will be seen in Paris at the Ballon d’Or gala.
