Deco and Bojan Back Laporta as Rivals Eye Anti-President Alliance

Barcelona’s presidential election is entering its final stretch, and things are getting properly interesting — alliances, queue-jumping, and a deadline that’s focusing minds across the city.

The Deadline That’s Concentrating Everyone

Monday 2 March is the cut-off for all pre-candidates to submit 2,337 valid signatures to officially enter the race for the Barça presidency. The election itself is set for 15 March, so the next few days are absolutely crucial for anyone who fancies running the club for the next five years.

Polls currently have Joan Laporta as the favourite — no massive surprise there — and he got a couple of high-profile names on his signature sheet this week.

Deco and Bojan Line Up Behind Laporta

Late on Wednesday afternoon, both Deco and Bojan made their way to the Defensem al Barça headquarters to formally sign their support for the incumbent president’s re-election bid. The two sporting directors — who’d already shown up at a similar event the previous Monday — were greeted by a pretty significant queue of members waiting to back Laporta.

Slightly awkward moment: rival pre-candidate Víctor Font was holding his own event right next door. You couldn’t make it up.

The Other Three and Their Not-So-Secret Chats

Font, Xavier Vilajoana, and Marc Ciria are all still in the thick of their own signature drives, busy ramping up campaign events and trying to get their sporting, financial, and social projects in front of as many socios as possible before the deadline hits.

But here’s the interesting bit — none of the three are ruling out some kind of joint platform against Laporta:

• All three broadly agree that Laporta hasn’t managed the club well enough during his current tenure
• People from within their respective teams have already been having informal chats about a potential alliance
• The common ground is a shared belief that Barça needs a proper change at the top

That said, nothing is done and dusted. The conversations are very much off the record, and not everyone in that camp is equally convinced that a pact is the right move. Some are clearly more keen than others.

What It All Means

Laporta walks into this race as the man to beat — he’s got the name recognition, the big institutional signings behind him, and the polling numbers. But if Font, Vilajoana, and Ciria can get their ducks in a row and present some sort of united front, they could at least make it a proper contest rather than a foregone conclusion.

Whether three pre-candidates with their own ambitions can genuinely put egos aside and coalesce around a single project? Well, that’s the dog that’s never quite caught the car in these situations, isn’t it. Watch this space — Monday’s deadline will tell us a lot.