Jaume Vicens Vives defined the Catalans as men of character, good people, pactists and citizens of faith. Joan Laporta has read the historian and knows that to run a club like Barça, especially when the Minotaur (another key figure in his NotÃÂcia de Catalunya) threatens, the staff sticks to the brand, brings out the best of themselves himself, he looks for agreements and is ready to believe everything. So Laporta knows better than anyone how to lead the story of the club where it suits him. Or to be more precise along a path where he avoids criticism and, with a bit of luck, even gets easy applause.
No one like him knows the cyclothymic nature of Barcelona. In two years we’ve gone from “I’ll fix this Messi thing with a roast” to sending him off because the club’s finances couldn’t afford it. From making us believe afterwards that Leo wanted to return to the team of his loves and get the stands to chant his name in the tenth minute of the games, to admitting that they couldn’t make him an offer if they didn’t sell players and lower them you are
This Messi and Laporta thing has become a tango. Do you remember the lyrics of Cambalache that Julio Sousa sang and that Serrat recovered years later? “If one lives in imposture / and another strives in his ambition, / he gives the same to be a curate, mattress maker, king of sticks / swindler or stowaway”. These two years of love and heartbreak have been a real whirlwind. Messi gave some clues to Mundo Deportivo about his decision to go to Miami instead of coming to Barcelona: “Many lies have been told that have bothered me”, “my situation with Barça is a wound that has not stopped bleeding”, “actually I have spoken very little with Laporta, once or twice at all”.
In Argentina there is a word that compromises little, synonymous with conversations with little foundation: milongas. Messi was illusion, nostalgia and a return to the past. But many people – because Catalans are people of faith – believed it. The most disconcerting thing is that the club continues to have the same skyrocketing wage bill as when Laporta joined. And they have stopped paying the salaries of Griezmann, Coutinho and likewise of Piqué, Busquets and Alba, the best paid. Someone didn’t do their homework, someone just told us about milongas.
