Real - Barca: When enemies need each other too
*Real - Barca: 3am on Friday, March 3, Hanoi time.
One morning in December 2022 in Madrid, the weather was cold, but inside the Ritz Hotel was the opposite atmosphere, with the heat radiating from money and power during a special press conference. Real president Florentino Perez and Barca's Joan Laporta side-by-side with CEO Bernd Reichart of A22 Sports Management - the company promoting the Super League super project.
Perez and Laporta are the main characters of the event, but they are not here to speak. It was Reichert who stood up to assert that the Super League was "not dead" and the presence of two powerful presidents reinforced this view, despite the rulings of the European Court of Justice just a day earlier. .
The event was organized to show the public that the two giants of Spanish football are still closely tied in their battle against common rivals, including UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin and Liga President Javier Tebas. Over the past two decades, Perez and Laporta have often been at the opposite end of the line as Madrid and Barca battled for Liga and even the Champions League title. But recent events gradually turn them into allies in a war that will have great consequences for both Spanish and European football.
When running for President of Real in 2000, Perez shocked with the promise of "robbing" Barca's best player at that time - Luis Figo, if elected. When the Portuguese player moved to Real in the transfer of the century, Catalonia was indignant and considered him an unforgivable traitor. In 2003, Laporta was hailed as the person who restored Barca's honor when winning the presidency and brought new features to the club rich in tradition.
The pain from the loss of Figo gradually faded, especially when coach Pep Guardiola appeared and homegrown talents like Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta succeeded brilliantly, and mesmerized the audience with style. play ball embroidered flowers brocade. In response, Perez hired the most prestigious coach of the time Jose Mourinho to overthrow Barca through battles both on and off the pitch. The climax of the ugly animosity came in August 2011, when Mourinho poked Barca assistant Tito Vilanova in the eye during an El Clasico match.
In the 2010s, El Clasico was an event not to be missed in the world of football, attracting more than 500 million viewers worldwide to witness the confrontation between the world's top superstars: Messi, Neymar and Neymar. Xavi, Iniesta against Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzama or Luka Modric.
El Clasico is also a place to express political declarations, as when Catalan fans chanted for independence on the Camp Nou stadium. An El Clasico match in 2019 was even postponed due to security concerns.
During the period Josep Maria Bartomeu was President of Barca (2014-2020), he often complained that too many opponents were controlled by Perez's "black hand". Bartomeu is not necessarily unreasonable, when the VIP area of the Bernabeu stadium regularly welcomes politicians, financiers and even King Juan Carlos I.
Barca and Real are like water and fire, on the one hand, those who fight for the independence of Catalonia against the defenders of conservative Spanish values. But the two sides are more alike than they can openly admit in the press. Both are member-led clubs, with local roots but international influence, and imperfect democracy leading to the enormous power of the president.
In 2021, Man City surpassed both Real and Barca for the first time to top Deloitte's Money League list with a revenue of 644.9 million euros, an increase of 17% compared to 2020. At the same time, Real and Barca's revenue decreased respectively. 7% and 18%. Man City's transfer cost of 218.8 million euros also far exceeds Real's 44.7 million and Barca's 90.8 million.
Compared to Real, Barca is not as decisive in breaking barriers, although recent presidents such as Laporta, Sandro Rosell, Bartomeu have not missed any opportunity to criticize the way UEFA operates club tournaments. Before resigning in October 2020, Bartomeu once stated that Barca wanted to attend the Super League in the future. At that time, President Tebas sarcastically "Bartomeu is Florentino's puppet, and Barca used to have a voice, but now they can only repeat Real's words".
That's a fact no Barca fan wants to hear, because the Super League is tied to the man who stole Figo from them and Mourinho's trickery with Vilanova. During the election of Barca president, Laporta eloquently declared in January 2021: "The Super League is only about money and will destroy football". He understood what voters wanted to hear, and was elected a second time in March of that year.
But just a few weeks later, Barca was again one of the 12 founding members of the Super League, with Perez at the head of the new alliance, and a beacon of light.
On television, Perez announced: "Convincing Laporta is not difficult. The Super League will save Barca from economic disaster. Tomorrow, Laporta will appear and announce to everyone." However, the wise former lawyer did not do that when he witnessed how the project died prematurely with angry protests in the UK.
That frustration doesn't play out in Catalonia, where those in the know know Perez is right. Barca was at that time 1.3 billion euros in debt and could not shake their heads with the mountain of money they would receive if the Super League became a reality. So, even when all other founding members except Juventus announced their withdrawal, Barca and Laporta still persisted in staying with Real and Perez.
Like Tebas, UEFA President Ceferin always seeks to divide the special relationship between Real and Barca. He told AS in May: "Barca has always been a people's team, unlike Real".
But the two super clubs still walked hand in hand through the storm, even though they had to go through a summer without a European team daring to play a friendly with them. Real and Barca organized an El Clasico match in Las Vegas, USA. When organizing the traditional pre-season Gamper Cup, Barca had to invite Mexican club UNAM Pumas to attend after AS Roma unexpectedly withdrew.
Difficulties did not make Laporta falter, but on the contrary, increasingly openly supported the Super League. During the October 2022 annual meeting, he affirmed that the Super League would be "an open, fair and respectful competition for other domestic leagues". The head of Barca also believes that the European Court will rule UEFA as an exclusive organization and need to change.
Even when the European Court of Justice ruled that UEFA and FIFA had rules that met EU law, Laporta went on the radio predicting the Super League would "become a reality in 2025". So the fact that Laporta appeared with Perez to ensure the project still had a future in December 2022 was not surprising.
Moreover, the Super League is not the only common concern of Real and Barca over the years. Because both have a common opponent, La Liga President Javier Tebas.
After being elected in 2013, Tebas continuously made moves to support the interests of small clubs that always felt oppressed by Real and Barca. In contrast, the two giants find it unfair, as they are not being rewarded compared to the contributions that make up half of Spain's total football revenue.
Real and Barca are two rare teams that have refused the CVC Fund's $2.7 billion sponsorship package that Tebas campaigned for. However, in the summer of 2022, Barca entered into a contract similar to CVC in essence, only different from its counterpart, Sixth Street of the US. The deal was arranged by Key Capital Partners, the Super League's financial backer. Thanks to that, Barca has an additional 517 million euros to cover urgent financial needs.
The Catalan media tries not to mention the obvious link between Key Capital Partners and Real. Instead, they focused on praising the "financial leverage" that helped stars Robert Lewandowski or Raphinha land at Camp Nou in the summer.
Then, Real and Barca allied themselves against the rest of La Liga in a battle over the Spanish government's Sports Law. Perez has sought to change the wording of the law in favor of Real and Barca, while Tebas and other clubs have tried to protect the fairness of the law. Sevilla president Jose Castro sarcastically: "All but a few, stand together."
Real and Barca also boycotted La Liga's business trip to create business partners in the Middle East. They are also not represented on the La Liga board which includes directors and senior officials of the teams. Their representative in the La Liga meeting in the Middle East is a lawyer from Clifford Chance - the law firm representing the Super League in the case against UEFA.
To outsiders, Real and Barca can be enemies, or more lightly, rivals, but their leaders think differently. Former president Ramon Calderon once told The Athletic: "There was never a problem between the two teams, not even the opposite. There were always intimate meals before the game. We knew we represented two rivals, but We were never enemies, but we always respected each other. I had a good relationship with Laporta and still do after all these years."
Except for the period of extreme tension like the classic matches of Mourinho's time, the relationship between Perez and the Barca presidents over the past 20 years is usually good. On one occasion, Perez accidentally soiled his tie at dinner before El Clasico, his counterpart quickly brought him a new range of ties to choose from. When Real received Barca at the Bernabeu, some Real fans insulted Rosell on the VIP area. As a result, those who bought tickets for this season were given a permanent seat by Perez.
The closeness between the presidents, especially since Laporta's re-appearance, has made Barca fans raise their eyebrows and even worry if Perez is taking advantage of the opportunity to destroy them. Evarist Murtra - director at Barca during Laporta's first term - expressed: "The relationship between Florentino and Laporta should have been equal. But now I don't see it. Barca is chasing Real, and I am upset by that. ".
However, now Real and Barca are on the same line and if only one misses, the other will surely fall. If one side is missing, the other person will be alone and no one will support. They need each other for common goals, and also for motivation as Perez once described: "If Barca didn't exist in the world, we would probably have to create them."
