I think I must have said this a billion times, but Laporta has never been a genius. He's as good as the people he surround himself with.
Elefant Blau in 2003 consisted of a lot of people that are still working at various clubs around Europe as top-level executives. He had a SD that had proven himself to be able to build two vastly different CL winning squads at Barca and put emphasis on scouting. Sure Txiki had his transfer blunders himself, but no one is infallible. What mattered is that he had way more success stories than failures. Johan Cruyff was still alive and Laporta took his advice very seriously. Even Sandro Rosell who has always been a SOB played a massive part in our revival back then as Ronaldinho might never have been a Barca player if not for Rosell knowing him and having those connections due to his tenure in Brazil with Nike.
Laporta is no football guy. He's an attorney that's a fan just like everyone else, but he surrounded himself with great people back then and trusted them which is/was one of the greatest things with him. He didn't get involved with every key decision as he trusted that his people had the competence to do the right thing.
Right now however despite a difficult financial situation, if you look at the people helping him out it's a former handball player who people in Catalunya have said is bigoted, his ex-wife's brother who by the way has no official position at FC Barcelona, but is always involved in every big decision including keeping Xavi lately, and two agents in Mendes and Pini Zahavi who doesn't have the club's best interests as their priority. Their priorities are their own pockets and their clients.
Favoritism, petty politics, nepotism, agent relations. You name it. I do believe Laporta cares a lot about the club and is desperate to get us back to the elites of Europe again, but he's not the young, charismatic guy anymore that could recruit and keep talented people to help him out anymore.
The worst thing is that I don't really believe someone like Victor Font who was his main challenger is really that much better. With Font it's a lot of yapping without anything concrete. The most concrete thing he brought up and talked about during the elections was how he was going to make Xavi the SD & Manager and basically have him make all our football decisions. Not even Pep does that at City lol.
