Font: Laporta Is the Only Thing Stopping Messi From Coming Home to Barça
Presidential hopeful Víctor Font has laid out a bold three-pronged plan to bring Leo Messi back to Barcelona — and he's pointing the finger squarely at Laporta.
Víctor Font has gone full send on his Messi masterplan, and he’s not shy about who he reckons is standing in the way.
The Barcelona presidential candidate used a public presentation on Saturday to set out exactly how he’d bring the greatest player of all time back to Camp Nou — and he was pretty blunt about the current state of affairs.
Blame It on Laporta
Font’s central argument is simple: the only obstacle between Messi and a return to Barcelona is Joan Laporta himself. No diplomatic tiptoeing, no ‘it’s complicated’ — just a direct accusation that the existing relationship between the club’s president and its greatest ever player is what’s poisoning the well.
For Font, fix that relationship and you fix the problem. Easy as that, apparently.
A Three-Pronged Plan
What makes Font’s pitch interesting isn’t just the Laporta-bashing — it’s that he’s actually thought about how a Messi return would work in practice. He’s broken it down into three areas:
- Sporting: Font wants Messi to get the send-off he deserved but never got. When Leo left in 2021, it was a tearful press conference rather than a proper farewell on the pitch. Font says that has to be corrected — a testimonial at the Spotify Camp Nou so the man can say goodbye to the culés properly, from the grass, not a podium.
- Institutional: Font wants to make Messi an Honorary President of the club — recognising him as a universal, one-of-a-kind asset whose image embodies the values of La Masía and everything Barça stands for. That would require a change to the club’s statutes, which would need to be approved by the members’ assembly.
- Commercial: This is where it gets genuinely interesting. Font sees a Messi-Barça brand alliance as potentially the most powerful in world sport — drawing comparisons to Michael Jordan and Nike, or Roger Federer and ON Running. The idea being that you monetise the connection properly and generate serious new revenue streams for the club.
Bigger Picture
Font also framed the Messi project as part of a wider effort to properly integrate club legends into Barcelona’s ecosystem — something he clearly feels the current board has dropped the ball on.
Whether any of this actually happens depends on a few things: Font winning a presidential election, Messi’s own wishes, and what his situation looks like towards the end of the year. Font acknowledged as much, noting that the sporting side “depends exclusively on his own will and his situation at the end of this year.”
It’s a proper vision, to be fair — whether it’s realistic is another matter entirely. But as campaign pitches go, promising to bring back the greatest of all time tends to get people’s attention.