BARCELONA – Joan Laporta won the Barcelona presidential election last Sunday, debuted virtually accompanying Ronald Koeman’s team in Paris and began shaping the club he wants in the immediate future, where his first big goal is to sign Erling Haaland.
Focusing on resolving the critical economic situation at the Camp Nou, the new president does not neglect the sporting aspect.
And if he already understood the need to “tweak the staff”, as he stated during the election campaign, once in command, confirmed to ESPN by direct collaborators of his team, he intends to throw the rest … As far as your chances go.
These tweaks shouldn’t be many, but there’s one name that stands out above all else: Erling Haaland.
And if before the elections Laporta warned that Barça should be “in a position to sign what is needed”, once at the head of the Barça ship he understands that the signing of the Norwegian footballer would be a blow capital, similar to that once personalized Ronaldinho, who would relaunch the team and the club in all respects.
“You need to know the exact situation of the club in every way,” said one person of his candidacy, recalling that the moment of Barça is not so different from what Laporta found in 2003 but that now, with almost three months ahead until the end of the season, “there’s more time to change things.”
The new president, who is expected to take over the club next Tuesday, advanced many duties during the campaign. He signed Ferran Reverter as the new general manager, recruited Mateu Alemany to be the football director, where he will work in collaboration with Jordi Cruyff, and although he did not want, for obvious reasons, to maintain any contact with Ronald Koeman, yes he was interested in the spirit of the staff and spoke with some heavyweights of the locker room, who conveyed the needs of the team, according to him.
The Esport 3 channel revealed on Wednesday that Laporta’s big goal is to sign Haaland and that despite the enormous difficulty involved in achieving this, he is not closing any doors. The Norwegian striker has an agreement with Borussia Dortmund by which he could leave the club for 75 million euros … From June 2022, with which to advance a year his incorporation would be considered impossible, unless his club was forced, for financial reasons, to agree to advance this scenario a year.
What would that scenario be? Hans-Joachim Watzke, president of Borussia, agreed a few months ago that if the team stays out of the Champions League “we will have to sell our silverware” in a clear reference to Haaland or jadon Sancho, the two big cracks future of your team. And seeing the current situation in the Bundesliga, sixth in the standings four points from fourth place, it is not a chimera to think that this could happen. He would only enter the Champions League next season, winning the title in the current one, in which he is currently qualified for the quarterfinals.
For Barça, however, the operation would go over 100 million euros given the large commissions to be shared between Haaland’s father and his representative, Mino Raiola, who already made money with the passage from the Salzburg in Borussia.
Here Laporta considers a point in his favor the good relationship he has with Raiola, which began with the signing of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2009 and gave the representative a profit close to eight million euros and has remained in the over the years. In the summer of 2015, without going any further, Raiola proclaimed that the signing of Paul Pogba by Barça “will be very possible if Laporta wins the elections”, leaving in the wake of a trip by Albert Soler (of the candidacy of Bartomeu) in Turin to talk to Juventus.
WEIGHTEN THE TEMPLATE
The arrival of Haaland is considered a major challenge not only due to the delicate financial situation of the club to deal with the signing, but also the presence of other major clubs interested in the player (with Real Madrid in the foreground), due to the need to reduce the salary mass of the squad and this is where the task, which is not easy, of giving out several players who would not be counted in the new sports project.
The names of Philippe Coutinho, Samuel Umtiti, Net or Junior Firpo are obviously on stage … Although they may not be the only ones in the revolution posed by the new management of Barça, ready to make an absolute effort to add to what is considered a differential footballer in the coming years.