A Report Card for Rosell

Last week was the one year anniversary of Sandro Rosell's victory in the FC Barcelona Presidential elections. It was a landslide victory, winning more than 60% of the votes, a testament to his abilities as an organiser and a politician, and in a foot-balling sense I thought Barcelona couldn’t have been in better hands. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I couldn't have been more wrong.

It isn't even a knee-jerk reaction. I´ve spent a lot of time over the last year making excuses for the man, sending blame at previous leadership, at bad investments he´s been stuck with, but no more. Look at his first decision.

He removes Johann Cruyff from his role as honorary President. It was a silly title no doubt, given to the Barcelona legend as one last poke in the eye to the incoming President by his nemesis Laporta, but I thought Barça needed someone with the media presence of a Cruyff to go toe-to-toe with Jose Mourinho and take pressure off of Pep, Rosell and the squad. It showed one of the glaring weaknesses that Rosell exhibits: he can´t ignore petty personal slights for the betterment of the club.

From then on it has been a litany of bad public-relations choices. He implemented a plan to limit membership to the club. He attacked Laporta publicly, opening the books and not only blamed the previous leadership but brought up legal papers against them, dragging the club down to the level of a street brawl. He gathered little favour for his plan to take money from the Qatar Foundation and squeezing Unicef to a small strip at the back of their shirt. He botched transfers in (Cesc Fabregas was set and done last year) and transfers out (Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Milan on a net-loss of 45 million euros). Let´s not even talk about hanging the club and Pep Guardiola out to dry in the media. When the club were being accused of doping, diving and cheating in the midst of a series of bitter clashes with Real Madrid, Rosell made it very clear that he wouldn´t take the focus away from the team by making a public statement. Instead, he waits until weeks after the season is over and promises to break diplomatic ties with Real Madrid if the verbal attacks by one of their ¨employees¨ continues. He´s giving you one last chance madridistas. You think he gets his wish and the rhetoric dies down? Of course not. It´s ineffectual.

For a guy who has made it his life´s work to come back from public ostracism with Joan Laporta and take the reigns of the Presidency of FC Barcelona, it is shocking how poor his leadership skills are, and he´s playing a game right now that stands to break the backs of FC Barcelona for years to come.

Since Cruyff returned to the club with Joan Laporta and re-implemented his Ajax training regimen, the Barcelona youth-team structure at La Masia has become a priceless treasure, spewing out viable professionals left and right. It´s envied and copied worldwide and it has allowed Barcelona to remain ahead of a Real Madrid squad that were built with the highest expenditure of transfer fees in recorded history. Over the last decade when the club needed someone to replace a club legend, all it needed to do was open up the gates and another would take his place. Guardiola to Xavi, Ronaldinho to Messi, and when the club bought big stars like Thierry Henry, Zlatan or David Villa for the club it was youngsters like Pedro and Bojan who stepped in when the adjustment to playing in the Camp Nou was too difficult.

Now however, the emphasis has turned. Chilean winger Alexis Sanchez is the next pseudo-Galactico that Rosell is bringing in. To make room, the club have ceded Bojan to AS Roma on-loan, given up on seriously negotiating for Cesc Fabregas, and are desperate to move Jeffren in a make-weight to Udinese. Liga Adelante pichichi Soriano is on the block, as are Dos Santos, Bartra, and a handful of others, and all for what? Gambles, hype and the idea that even high-minded clubs like FC Barcelona cave when shoe companies and agents come calling?

I guess that´s where it stands. Rosell is just like any other businessman who builds an organisation in his own image. He has blind spots and prejudices like anyone else and he lets his own ego interfere in the running of the club. He has accomplished a few things in his tenure. There is no denying that. The club have done well. They won the league again for the third straight year and they won the Champions League for the third time in the last five, and yet even for that I can´t give him anything more than a barely passing grade.  That the club have still been able to win is a testament to their players, their staff and their coach, but there is a point where fortunes can turn. He means well. He´s a socio from way back, but he´s doing more harm than good.

Visca Barça 1.4: Rosell v Laporta, an Uncivil War

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For around 16 months, the blaugrana flag flew at the Camp Nou with pride. Champions League winners, winners of the league and the King's Cup, and eventual holders of the World Club Cup. It's brightest lights, Spaniards of passport but Catalán of spirit, helped win the first World Cup trophy for Spain breaking the hegemony of nations that had held the right to the Jules Rimet Trophy and its successor. Barça were respected for their game, the manner in which they played, and the manner in which they created that dynasty through careful buys but moreso because of their insistence on growing their own world-class players through La Masia training ground. It's a story most people know now. So much that many have been turned off by the sheer amount of praise, blind fellowship with the democratic ideals that guide the club and the misunderstood phrase that binds all culés together: Mes que un club: more than a club; turning the triumphant blaugrana into one of the most hated clubs in the world. Or envied. There's a lot of envy there as well.

Envied from without would be one thing, easily remedied by circling the wagons using it as a motivational tool, but what has happened to FC Barcelona over the last few months is far more sinister, and knowing a bit about the history of FC Barcelona, fully in keeping with the DNA of such a club. The dirty secret about Barça is that quite often the greatest enemy to the blaugrana cause isn't Real Madrid or the centrist government, but within their own midst. Here you have a pair of businessmen, partners at one time, who had a very public falling out: Joan Laporta and his second Sandro Rosell. Their private duel has become not only a weight around each of their own legacies but a weight that threatens to drag the club down with them.

Let me explain. Joan Laporta´s second term as Barcelona President was coming to an end. He was very unpopular in that last term, surviving a vote on no-confidence after two unsuccessful seasons, only to luck into the appointment of his term, ditching calls to sign José Mourinho as Frank Rijkaard´s successor and handing the reigns over to club-legend Pep Guardiola. He had wriggled away from his critics but it would not last. He knew how popular Sandro Rosell had become with those same socis or members that had threatened his Presidency. He also realized, as José Ramon de la Morena cataloged this week on his program El Larguero on Cadena Ser, that ¨If Rosell won the election he´d have access to the books and he´d open them for the socios.¨ With a burgeoning career in regional Catalán politics at stake, he would do anything to stop that from happening.

He knew that the club had made serious financial mistakes and that his bitter rival Rosell would call his predecessor out publicly on them. Laporta of course defends his terms, why not, if your stewardship has been one of the most successful in Barcelona´s history. Countless trophies, new membership: making it of the most highly supported clubs in the world, and most importantly, Laporta´s reign saw a revenue growth from the €297.3 million reported in the 2006-07 season to €415.4 million in 2009-10. The problem being here is that operating expenses also grew out proportion: from €283.6 million in 2006-07 to €486.9 million in 2009-10 leaving the yearly losses at €71.5 million and not the 11 million euro profit that Laporta´s accountants had written in the books.

It was nothing new. From the beginning there were members who did not like Laporta´s big spending ways. It was his willingness to secure David Beckham´s signature for the blaugrana that catapulted him past safer candidates and secured his Presidency at least initially. Beckham never came, but Ronaldinho did, as did the likes of Rafa Marquez, Samuel Etoó, Deco, Thierry Henry, and Dani Alvez. For all the talk about La Masia being the base from which Barcelona began its winning tradition under Laporta with the promotions of Lionel Messi, Gio Dos Santos, Busquets, Bojan and Pedrito, it was one of the most lavish periods of buying players: €455.05 million in Laporta´s term alone. In that time they were only able to recoup €127.59 million of that. People talk of the Zlatan Ibrahimovic debacle, losing close to €40 million on him alone, but losing another €30 million in the collective transfers of Deco, Ronaldinho and Etoó was almost as bad. Granted, transfers are a crapshoot, so betting on the likelihood of successful transfers is an idiot´s game, but how do you explain the €8.0 million paid to quiet Zlatan´s ex-Pizza-man agent? Add the lavish lifestyle, the drunken parties filled with cava, the private jets and the dodgy investments. It was all part of a whole; a reminder that this global economic crisis came from a period of unchecked spending and FC Barcelona were not immune to it. Does it surprise anyone that the overall debt under Laporta´s reign ballooned close to €500 million euros? That´s more than Valencia´s.

Now Laporta has hit out at his former Vice-President, and lest you think that this is a pro-Rosell argument, let me just say that I am in agreement with him to a certain extent. This legal action to sue Laporta and his board of directors isn´t a measured response to a troubling financial dilemma that Rosell faces as President. This is a very public and very open expression of a private battle between two very similar characters. From removing Johann Cruyff as an honorary President, to nixing on the €350 million redesign of the Camp Nou, to freezing foreign membership in the club, it has all been of a mind to remove any lasting physical evidence of Laporta´s reign as President, or at least it seems that way to me.

The club socios may not have liked Johann Cruyff but he was an invaluable asset. Having him around as the public face of the club, at least on the Sporting end, allowed Pep and Txiki Begiristain to perform their jobs with the minimum of public scrutiny. Any criticism that the club took was gladly absorbed by the crotchety Dutchman. His mentoring of a young coach like Guardiola was essential in their winning of the six trophies two years ago. His effect on the club is obvious by his absence this year. The rest looks like, to an outsider like myself, an insular and short-sighted reaction to pressing problems. If there is double-digit unemployment in Spain, how do you close yourself to membership in growing markets in the Far East? If there is a highly contested new season, both domestically and in Europe, and your rival has been renewed and reloaded at your expense, why do you bring such a public focus to financial irregularities at this particular moment in time? It is a distraction that could have drastic consequences on the season as a whole. Might there have been another way and another time to handle this mess?

I must admit, I like Sandro Rosell. I think the former Nike executive has a lot to bring to the boardroom at FC Barcelona, but to be President at Barca you need more than business acumen and a perfectly tailored suit. You need to lead. You need to think progressively while never losing sight of the qualities that typify FC Barcelon and right now he´s lost that on both counts. I don´t see how blaming Laporta solves anything. Then again, as history explains, this political game between candidates is nothing if not par for the course. Some of the greatest wounds that FC Barcelona has received have been self-inflicted.

FC Barcelona's New President Sandro Rosell

New Barcelona President Sandro Rosell addresses the media