It was a remarkable event yesterday at Stanford. Joan Laporta, the president of FC Barcelona, gave a lecture about the club’s history, sporting values, and humanitarian vision. Having Laporta speak at Stanford was a good mach: Excellence, entrepreneurship, and leadership are virtues that both brands have in common, and the program consequenly turned out to be a true lovefest. Laporta impressed as a perfect ambassador for Barca – a sincere, warm, and humble man with a good sense of humor and an obvious passion for the “beautiful game” that his club – more than any other soccer club in the world – represents. He shook everyone’s hand, listened carefully, and engaged in many conversations. He said things such as “We want to be the best, not necessarily the first” or “Heaven for me means Barca scores against Real Madrid every minute” and was just a gentleman overall. He heralded the decision to sign a five-year sponsorship agreement with UNICEF as “one of the best decisions the club ever made,” and it’s true that UNICEF was the best possible signing for the club (the next possible candidate would have been a company from Silicon Valley, as some blogs – falsely – had rumored…see picture below).
I had the chance to speak with Laporta briefly about the challenge of managing risk at a soccer club, which, by its very nature, is an extremely volatile enterprise. He said that soccer happens in four-year cycles and that it can be detrimental if you hang on to the same group of players for too long (as Madrid did). In fact, it was mandatory, he said, to change a winning team. And he added:“ I hope I will have the strength to make some tough decisions.” Clearly, the Barca team, in the current constellation, has peaked. Laporta is a wise man and knows this. His heart is beating for Barca but his head is that of a business man.
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