FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta revealed he’s made peace with club legend Ronald Koeman after a … More
FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta revealed he’s made peace with club legend Ronald Koeman after a well-publicised rift between the two men.
Netherlands head coach Koeman, who is a hero to Culers for his winning goal in 1992 which brought Barça its first Champions League crown at Wembley against Sampdoria, fell out with Laporta for the way he was fired in 2021.
Despite having to deal with the departure of Lionel Messi and landing the Copa del Rey a few months before, Koeman was dismissed following a 1-0 loss to Rayo Vallecano.
He was replaced by another Blaugrana midfield legend in Xavi Hernandez, who in turn was fired in 2024 as current manager Hansi Flick then took over the reins.
The Dutchman has regularly taken swipes at Laporta in the press ever since, and in 2022 said that the Blaugrana chief had made a mistake by not just firing but also being critical in public. He had a dig at the club’s leader for allowing Messi to flee to Paris Saint-Germain too, which happened not long after being elected for a second spell in charge.
“The locker room was never against me. The problem came when there was a change of president,” he said of Laporta to TV3.
“As president you can always have doubts with your coach, but not public ones. It was a big mistake by Laporta,” he added.
Some three years after those remarks, however, a rare public appearance together related to the Koeman Cup saw the two parties revealed they have made up.
“There is affection because apart from Ronald being a Barça legend, he is a great person and this unites us. There are many feelings that we share and we thought that what was happening did not make sense,” Laporta said, while adding with a laugh that a reconciliation wasn’t done over a coffee and instead a popular Spanish drink known as a carajillo which mixes coffee with brandy or rum.
“The most important thing is Barça, I think that in life sometimes there are more important things than a conflict between two people,” Koeman said.
FC Barcelona President Laporta now needs to mend fences with Lionel Messi
Depending on who you talk to, things are still apparently frosty between Laporta and FC Barcelona’s greatest player of all time in Messi. The Argentine allegedly doesn’t like the way he had to leave his boyhood outfit, though there has been talk of him returning to the club in a behind-the-scenes role in retirement.
