Former Barcelona defender Oleguer Presas is now more known for his politics than his footballing career. He played 175 times for the Catalan giants during a five-year spell between 2003 and 2008, winning two LaLiga titles and the Champions League in 2006. Despite playing for one of the best clubs in Spain, he never played for the national side, instead opting to represent Catalonia. He left LaLiga side in 2008 for Dutch giants Ajax, where he spent the rest of his career before hanging up his boots in 2011.
However, politics was always on his mind. As many of his team-mates went on to play for Spain, he rejected the chance ahead of the national side’s success at the Euros and World Cup. He opted to play for Catalonia over Spain and was aware of the impact his views had on people’s opinion of him. In his youth, he was considered to be quite rebellious as he attended protests in Barcelona and Amsterdam.
Now Oleguer is more focused on battling against the commercialisation of the sport he was once at the top of. He believes that football has become a business, a spectacle, focused on making economic profits. Fans are no longer fans, they are spectators. Members are no longer members, they are consumers of the club. Everything revolves around money.
The former Barcelona star also runs a football project that aims to take away the competitive nature out of football. The project is an opportunity to hold training sessions where learning is not solely football-related in order to seek the sporting excellence that is usually sought but with vital learning and where the football aspect was not central.
At the project, people get to enjoy the beautiful game without being sucked into the competitive side of football. Oleguer believes that grassroots football is very focused on performance and from his point of view there are human situations that he doesn’t like and that make him feel uncomfortable. He tries to do what he does to put an end to inequalities in an unjust society.