In recent months, lThe reality of a FC Barcelona theoretically undergoing reconstruction has only gotten worse. After the end of the season (2022-2023) in which the League title was celebrated after four years of drought, with the burden of European failure, the circumstances were socially complicated but sportingly they invited optimism. But since then, various factors have been added that predict a dark immediate future both for the stability of the club and for the trajectory of the professional teams, especially football, but also, and notably, that of the basketball section, which is adrift.
The report that EL PERIÓDICO begins to publish today affects the most outstanding aspects of an entity that not only suffers from the economic legacy and the disastrous management of the Bartomeu era, but also the consequences of a presidential and personalist style, the one of Laporta, that has not managed to reverse the errors of the past and that has delved even further into a present that is characterized by budget precariousness and a future in which the sale of club assets investment funds severely question the financial autonomy and viability itself. In this kind of perfect storm, it is worth adding the partner’s timid, unenthusiastic reaction to the transfer to the Estadi de Montjuïc and, of course, the growing doubts about the path followed by the works on the renovated Camp Nou and the Espai Barça, both for the reliability of the forecasts and for the conditions in which the work is carried out, reported these weeks by this newspaper. You cannot trust the siren song of a hypothetical European Super League (with promises of large income, after the favorable court ruling, but with the uncertainties of a project that, today, does not have the endorsement of the powerful British clubs) as a lifeline to a balance sheet that prevents the level of other European clubs. Furthermore, the noose continues to hang of the Negreira case, which could seriously affect not only the reputation of Barça as has already happened, and the opinion that UEFA’s financial engineering balances deserve. era of levers.
Regarding the strictly sporting situation, the one that deserves the most media attention, Barça is suffering a desert journey in terms of play and results, very far from what could be expected from the team, with a coach who is already beginning to be questioned and with a squad that does not seem to give enough of itself to aspire to the three competitions in which it is still in contention. While, the female Barça, the most victorious banner in recent times, hangs by a thread, with announced terminations and difficulties in the renewals of the stars.
Faced with this panorama, institutional reactions have opted for the strategy of the kick to follow, of the smoke screen (as has happened with the case of Espai Barça) in the form of blaming the environment, the search for external enemies or the usual ghosts in a club that seems to follow a direction without direction. The pessimistic X-ray would not change with a possible resurrection of the first team after the winter reinforcements. Sports successes (nowadays difficult to imagine) would only mitigate a crisis that, unfortunately, is expected to be long-term.