Article by Mihai Șovei – Published Sunday, March 29, 2026, 10:21 / Updated Sunday, March 29, 2026 10:35
Joan Laporta will officially take up his third term as Barcelona president on July 1, after winning the election on March 23. Meanwhile, the Catalan boss answered several questions about his future tenure as well as some sensitive topics from the past.
Among them were the arbitration in Spain, the relationship with Florentino Perez, but also Messi's departure from Barcelona.
Laporta: “The relationship with Florentino Perez has deteriorated”
“We've always had the feeling that we have to be much better than the others because the referees don't help us. Here, it always seems to help Real Madrid. Now they are criticizing the fact that we hired someone who was a vice-president, while they had presidents of the referees' commission linked to Madrid.
It's been quite some time since we last spoke to Florentino Perez. Since he came forward in the “Negreira” case, relations have deteriorated. We decided to leave the Superliga due to a lack of meaning: the project was not materializing, and we had already told them. In addition, UEFA was taking steps to improve the sustainability of football in Europe,” Laporta said, according to El Pais, as quoted by AS.
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The Negreira case is an ongoing sports corruption investigation involving Spanish football club FC Barcelona and Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, former vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF).
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The case focuses on payments totaling around 8.4 million euros made by FC Barcelona to companies linked to Negreira between 2001 and 2018, when he was vice-president of the CTA. FC Barcelona claims to have hired Negreira as an external consultant to provide technical reports on the arbitration.
Joan Laporta / Photo: Imago Images
Laporta also spoke about Messi's departure from Barcelona. The episode that took place in the summer of 2021 is one for which Catalan fans blamed the president.
“I did what I had to do. Leo was at the end of his career and a new team needed to be built. Would I have liked to build the new team with Leo's help? Yes. I tried but it didn't work”he added.
