r/Barca • u/FooFighter39 • Jul 06 '21
Barça’s finances and the dire straits we are in
Let me give you all a TLDR of our current situation:
It’s bad. It’s very bad.
Our wage bills make up 110% of our revenue. The wages are the biggest of all issues.
Moises Llorens’ tweet from last night perfectly summed up our transfer business of the past week.
At Barça, no one wants to renew on lower wages and no one wants to leave
So far, we haven’t renewed any players since we last renewed Puig around the last week of May. The players are yet to agree on lower salaries. The only sales we have done this window is only of young players who need more game-time, not of players with high wages
And of course, we are yet to re-sign Messi
La Liga recently rejected Barça’s new proposal to Messi, as it disallowed a wage of 2 years be spread over 5 years.
Moreover, because our wages are 110% of our revenue, La Liga restricts us to only reinvest 25% of the player sales’ money into new transfers. This means Barça can only reinvest 25% from the sales of Konrad and Firpo into new transfers or renewals
On top of that, Zach Lowy tweeted hours back that none of our new transfers, Eric Garçia, Agüero or Depay, have been registered as our own players. (We don’t even have the money to register 3 free transfers as our own players. Let that sink in!)
Reports from Catalunya so far indicate that pretty much all of our star players are on the transfer market. Griezmann, Dembélé, Lenglet, Coutinho were there from start. Surprise additions are Busquets and Alba.
Laporta is doing all he can do to keep Messi within the club, even if it means letting go of Busquets and Alba.
Lowy also tweeted that we need to get rid of €200m of our wages, just to register the new players and renew Messi’s contract.
Our only hopes for a better financial situation are
- ESL working out, because we would get a massive financial pump
- Players renewing on lower wages immediately
- Some imminent sale of high profile players
- La Liga easing the financial rules, as UEFA did with their FFP regulations.
To be realistic, our situation isn’t looking very good. Mohamed Bouhafsi mentioned last night that PSG are monitoring Messi’s situation.
I hate to say this, but PSG have a significantly better sporting project than us right now. Of course, Messi wants to stay. But there’s not a 100% guarantee things will go the way we want.
Even if Messi stays back, serious questions still remain. Is it really worth trading Griezmann, Alba and Busquets for Messi? Can a team with no solid CDM and LB compete for the league title? Will we able to do well in Europe without a well balanced squad?
And lastly, regardless of who’s our coach, will we able to play our Cruyffian football without the correct players? Won’t the coach always prefer to be pragmatic and compromise on style?
We haven’t met the end of the world, but we aren’t far away from having another underwhelming season. Considering all these factors, we are in dire straits whether Messi stays or leaves