But this desire to be transparent in the commissions stopped being put into practice very soon. In fact, just six days later, on February 7, Barça officially announced that they had closed the sponsorship agreement with Spotify. In negotiations with the Swedish music playback company for streaming an intermediary, Darren Dein, agent of ex-footballer Thierry Henry and responsible for bringing Cesc Fàbregas to the Camp Nou in 2011, played a key role. Laporta himself publicly thanked the work done by Dein in the assembly to approve this sponsorship that was held on April 3. But, at no time did he reveal the high commission that Dein had received for the services provided in that operation.
Now the lack of transparency in the commissions has opened doubts about the role that Guim Laporta, the middle son of the president of Barça, is having as a representative of players in some operations that the Blaugrana club has recently carried out. On July 18, 2022, Guim Laporta and Raúl Verdú, representative and former soccer player, jointly created the company Top Level Football 77, dedicated to the management and representation of soccer players of any category. Verdú himself has recognized a The confidential that the company represents a player from Barça’s Cadet A, Marc Bernal, and that it participated in the signing of Marcos Alonso by the Barcelona club last summer.
In fact, the full-back’s agency is Lian Sports Group, linked to agent Fali Ramadani. “The company [Top Level Football 77], in reality, is not invoicing and has only been created to make it easier for Guim and I to be able to collect a salary for the services we provide to Ramadani”, he also admits to the Spanish digital Verdú, who adds that he is yet to be paid for the intermediation in the signing of Alonso by Barça. Instead, he points out that, although the company collaborated in the departures of Sergiño Dest and Clement Lenglet from Barça last summer, it did not collect.
Barça denies breaching the law
This intermediation by Guillem Laporta could cause a violation of Barça’s code of ethics and, even, of the Catalan sports law, which makes it clear that managers (in this case, Joan Laporta would be) have the following is prohibited: “Contract through your companies, or on behalf of a third party, with the sports organization itself where you exercise managerial functions. This ban on self-employment affects the companies of their spouses, people linked with a similar cohabitation relationship and their descendants or ascendants”.
Barça’s reaction to the publication of this information was to carry out an express investigation by the area of compliance which concluded that “it has been established that in no case has Mr. Guillem Laporta participated in the intermediation operations for the transfers or assignments relating to the Alonso-Lenglet-Dest operations (or any other)” and that, from Barça, “no payment has ever been made to Top Level Football 77”. In addition, regarding Verdú’s statements, the press release from the Barcelona club explains that, despite the fact that they have jointly established Top Level Football 77, Verdú and Guillem Laporta are autonomous, independent of each other, and that the second he has not obtained any benefit, direct or indirect, from Barça or any of the club’s players. The statement is signed by the director of complianceSergi Atienza, a lawyer who already had a relationship with Joan Laporta before being appointed to the position in April because he has an office in the same building on Avinguda Diagonal in Barcelona from where the Barcelona president runs the law firm Laporta & Arbós, for which Atienza had done services in the past.
On the other hand, the statement says nothing about another aspect of the case that he put on the table What are you playing with? from SER Catalunya: the fact that several representatives explain that Guillem Laporta would have called players from the Barça base football with the intention of capturing them. ARA has asked the club’s offices about this aspect and the answer it has received is that those involved “categorically denied it”. On the other hand, the question has also been transferred to the direction of formative football, the responsibility of José Ramón Alexanco, and to the area of compliance. In these cases, the answer has been silence.
