Names, noise and no clear blueprint: Barcelona presidential candidates have disappointed ahead of the elections | OneFootball

The lead-up to FC Barcelona’s presidential elections should have been a debate about where the club was headed in the next five years.

Instead, it has petered out into a smear campaign built on old wounds, politically exploiting club legends and a general sense of lack of direction.

The election that should have been about 2026-2031

On Sunday, 15 March, 2026, Barcelona’s members will choose between Joan Laporta and Victor Font for the presidency through 2031.

More than 1,14,000 members will be eligible to vote, which is exactly why these presidential debates should have been one of the most serious conversations regarding the club’s future.

This isn’t an exercise to choose the mascot, a campaign slogan or the most familiar face in the room. They are choosing who gets to shape the sport, financial and institutional direction of one of Europe’s best clubs for the next five years and beyond.

And, this is precisely what makes the tone of this campaign so far so disappointing.

A club still dealing with debt due to financial mismanagement of the past, navigating through the consequences of financial levers while still trying to remain competitive and do so playing an attractive brand of football, deserved a battle of blueprints from the two candidates.

It deserved a real argument about governance, sporting continuity, Camp Nou revenues, member protections, and what Barcelona want to look like by the time this next presidential cycle ends. Instead, the campaign has too often sounded like a feud with microphones.

To be fair, neither Joan Laporta nor Victor Font are running without promises. Both have policies and campaign talking points. The issue, however, is the emphasis.

Instead of asking for votes through their policy positioning, both have resorted to a concocted smear campaign of who lied, who manipulated, who used whom, who damaged the club, who resembles Donald Trump, who is a good Barça fan, and who represents the true Barça spirit.

All this is a poor substitute for vision.

Laporta’s campaign of assumption

Will Laporta triumph again? (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

Laporta has entered this race with the confidence of a man who believes recent history is on his side. To be fair, he has earned that degree of assumption.

He returned to office in 2021, beating Font to the throne and has successfully navigated the club through extreme financial pressure, a revival under Hansi Flick and a feeling that he still remains the best option to run a club of this magnitude. There is substance to this narrative.

But what Laporta should have done is use this to his advantage and campaigned from a position of strength. Instead, he seems to be campaigning from a position of assumption.

Too often, he has sounded like a man asking for continuity on the basis of aura, memory, and emotional ownership of the institution. He often tends to argue that he understands Barça in a way that not many others can and that this should be sufficient to see him retain presidency.

He has spent much of his time in this electoral period sweeping the stadium, cooking in a restaurant and driving a tractor.

Laporta has often projected the air of a man who assumes the office remains his unless somebody produces a dramatic enough reason to take it away. That is powerful politics. It may even be effective politics. But it is not ‘Mes Que Un Club’.

Font’s opposition that has become obsession

If Laporta’s weakness has been his confidence often becoming complacency, Font’s has been his over-obsession in destructing his rival’s stature.

Yes, opposition candidates in a presidential race must attack. It is a part of the job. However, what Font has failed to understand is that it is not the entire job.

The 53-year-old’s campaign has too often heavily relied on being anti-Laporta, and it has overshadowed what plans he has for the club.

The clearest example of this is how he has dragged in club legends like Lionel Messi and Xavi Hernandez into this final stretch of the campaign.

Font has publicly urged the Argentinian to come out and “tell the truth” about his failed 2023 return, after Xavi alleged that Laporta had blocked it for personal reasons.

Will Victor Font succeed in overthrowing Laporta? (Photo by LLUIS GENE/AFP via Getty Images)

While that may be legitimate political ammunition, what it also tells you is that a candidate who claims to represent the future of the club has spent crucial days in the build-up trying to turn the pain of the past and names that still carry a lot of emotional influence at the club into weapons for his own selfish ambitions.

This is where Font has arguably disappointed the most. In 2021, he presented himself as a method man, a project man and a person with an eye on the bigger picture. He presented himself as the antidote to presidentialism by instinct and to governance by charisma.

Yet, this time, he has continually contradicted the same. He has leaned on wounds, on old fractures, on the vulnerability of Xavi and the unfinished romance of Messi, as if those names could do for his candidacy what a fully convincing public vision has not yet done on its own.

That is not just tactical. It is a betrayal of his original promise.

The real questions are still unanswered

And, meanwhile, the real presidency sits elsewhere and remains unanswered.

How will Barcelona manage debt over the next cycle? What governance safeguards will protect the member-owned model? What should Espai Barça become once the applause around construction gives way to the harder questions of use, cost, and development?

How does the club keep La Masia central without turning it into their only source of talent? What is the plan for Hansi Flick to take this project to the next level?

This is where the substance lies. The main reason this election has felt unsatisfying is that these hard truths have been drowned by more glamorous arguments that have no value with regard to the future of the club.

On Sunday, the members will still make their choice, and one of these men will still inherit the responsibility of carrying Barcelona into the next cycle. But whoever wins should hear the underlying truth.

Messi’s name is not a strategy. Xavi’s hurt is not a blueprint. Laporta’s aura is not a plan. Barcelona deserve a future, not a feud. They deserve a president who can describe the next five years in a rock-solid manner.

This election was supposed to be about architecture and the future. Instead, often it has been about ash.