Joan Laporta gave a long interview Barca One a few days before the club’s 125th anniversary celebrations and the Clasico against Real Madrid: “Barcelona is alive. This week we presented the 125th anniversary poster, it’s a work of art. We’re in a good moment. Today the club makes money; when we arrived we had to use the levers to deal with urgent commitments and to improve the workforce. We gave traction, but the wound was open. Today we can say that Barça earns more than it spends. more revenue and 22% less expenses. This is very important. Merchandising is booming, we make 70% more than before. We have healed the wound, it cost a lot, but now we need institutional stability. The true creators of this moment of happiness for the Barcelona fans are the members who have given institutional stability, now we need to vote on the budget and we must remain united.”
Bartomeu’s legacy: “I don’t like to look in the rearview mirror. When we arrived the situation was very bad, the truth is that we were failing but we improved. We increased revenue, we reduced expenses, we reduced the wage bill of around 170 million euros… We need to have a lot of capacity. What we have and no one else has is La Masia, which produces great talents who come to play in the first team. I have already said that La Masía will be the center of our project and we are making it happen. We are paying attention to the market, but first we look at our home.”
Financial fair-play and the relationship with Tebas: “We are improving. The contract with Nike will help. It was not signed before because we wanted the best contract possible. Before December we must demonstrate that we have positive results, LaLiga has already recognized our efforts to reduce the wage bill. Tebas? We started in a complicated way but we have put things right. The relationship is healthy; there are aspects to improve and I think some rules will change before the end of the year fight against piracy and Barça collaborates on those things that it deems logical.”