Let's get one thing straight. We became victims of our own success. We have many legends here who took us to best years of Barca history. I can't say that Puyol, Dani, Xavi, Iniesta left too late. Maybe a season too late for Iniesta while Dani could have stayed on on the other hand.
Club did buy interesting players (many of which were very popular among us) and all the while did everything to keep Messi happy.
It wasn't all bad but in the end of the day we just had to react in 2018 and dealt with the source of the problem and that was/is lack of motivation.
Bartomeu is maybe the most extreme manifestation of the problem, but it really goes beyond him and this board.
The root of the problem is that our success was NOT based on strategic planning, which is precisely the domain in which a board should excel at.
Our success was serendipity.
It just
happened that a good crop of players appeared simultaneously in La Masia (with one of the best footballers ever to play the game, being the cherry on top of this crop). Most importantly, It just
happened that a coaching genius, that changed football, was a former Barca legend, one of the people that usually get employed in the club. Other factors that contributed less to the success [like Txiki being a good director] again
just happened out of serendipity, and not as an outcome of conscious planning and choice.
This was precisely our damnation ("our" referring to the fans mainly). We didn't realize early enough that the success of the club was not the result of conscious action. And this action always comes from top. Management of the club maybe was not traditionally Barcelona's strength with corrupted, incompetent people that acted like pure politicians usually featuring. This is the best recipe for failure.
When you have the top settled all other just follow through: If you have a board that is able to think strategically and plan consciously (and that means equipped with the right technocrats and not politicians), you will find the right institutional structure, the right marketing and financial policy, the right sporting director, you will find the right coach, the right academies, the right transfers, the right tactical plan etc etc. (And not just
happen to bump into a genius coach for example)
It's an organism that has to function from the top, from the head.
But it's never too late to change course. The English teams have been showing the way the last years on 'how to do it', with Liverpool standing out.
And that's the reason I support Font's platform. He seems the only one to get it.
This is the future of the sport, and we should catch it in order to retain our elite status for the years to come.
