Madrid: Barcelona presidential candidate Joan Laporta plans remove Qatar Airways from the front of the famous shirt and restore Unicef if he wins the election.
A lawyer and pro-Catalan independence politician, Laporta has tried to distinguish his candidacy from incumbent Josep Maria Bartomeu’s by criticising the sponsorship deal Barca signed with Qatar under former president Sandro Rosell.
As part of the deal with Qatar, Barca scrapped their policy of not displaying the name of a shirt sponsor and relegated the logo of long-term collaborator Unicef to the back of their jerseys, angering many of the club’s members.
Laporta suggested the Unicef logo would be restored to the front of the shirt in place of current sponsor Qatar Airways but did not say how he might make up for the lost revenue of some 30 million euros (Dh124 million) a season.
“We are for Unicef and they are for Qatar,” Laporta, who is close to former Barca player and coach Johan Cruyff, said.
“Having money is important but it is not everything in the world. Principles come before money.”
Laporta presented popular former player Eric Abidal as his technical director at a news conference in the Catalan capital on Monday.
Abidal, 35, played for Barca during a glittering run for the club between 2007 and 2013 and became a fan hero when he made a successful return after undergoing a liver transplant in 2012.
He joined Ligue 1 side Monaco in July 2013 and announced his retirement as a player in December after a brief stint with Greek club Olympiakos Piraeus.
“Barca is more than a club and I wanted to carry on working and maintain a link to that,” Abidal, who would help oversee Barca’s transfer market dealings, told reporters.
Another of his tasks would be to ensure Barca’s La Masia academy, which produced the likes of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi in recent times, remained the centre of excellence, he added.
