During his first tenure as president of FC Barcelona, they set a new record for trophies won in a 12-month period, winning 6 in 2009. After departing in 2010, he was re-elected as club president in 2021.
Joan Laporta, compared to the indolence of other managing leaders, started a crusade against the Boixos Nois. It was a valiant policy which is irrefutable.
Since he came into the job in 2003, the Catalonian ex president aimed for their eradication. The loutish response by threatening could not wait and so that very same year it did not take too long for defiant and brawdy graffiti to crop up on his family home. A telescopic line of fire was drawn at Laporta’s house entrance and it read as follows: “I’m going to kill you”, “our house is the Camp Nou and yours is your graveyard”, “this is just your shelter” or “Laporta motherfucker you won´t kick us out“.
In February 2004, the founder and president of the hooligans’ club, Manel Homar, tried to assault Laporta in the Palau Blaugrana, at the end of the handball game between FC Barcelona and Ademar León.
Joan Laporta has been an exemplary president against the violent ones and the only one to take steps towards their removal until 2010: “We have reduced the group, from 350 to 30 or 40; it has a very complicated task because they were there when I arrived and we could not accept either constraints or blackmail, they are dangerous, they scare and it conditions your life; you have to be accompanied by security personnel because they have threatened me with with graffiti on my house.
Another measure he committed to take during his mandate was the inclusion of anti-racism clauses, in every contract the club signed with its players and sponsors. The proposal came from the European Coalition of Cities against Racism (ECCAR), in which 103 clubs took part.
Laporta, as the vice-president of the ECCAR, took the proposition to the European Parliament after the agreement signed by UNESCO and FC Barcelona. It was approved unanimously.
„Many people, in my past, told me to only focus on my team’s performance and not to worry about the problems affecting society. I have never followed these directives or advice, because I strongly believe that everyone has their own feelings but all of us must play our part to live in a world at peace.”
