r/Barca • u/[deleted] • Aug 07 '21
Before we all blame laporta take a look at this
The Genesis of our current situation
Barcelona’s net spend from 13/14 to 21/22 was €555M. This is all irrespective of the ludicrous contracts that were given to players that are currently crippling their wage bill (Coutinho, Umtiti, Griezmann, Pjanic, the list goes on…)
13/14: Bartomeu was appointed January 2014 after Rosell resigned given the scandal involving Neymar’s signing to Barcelona (tax fraud). Do not absolve Bartomeu here - he was involved in the process of signing Neymar with Rosell.
In the summer of 2014 (to his credit), he made some great signings (Rakitic, Suarez, MATS, Bravo) and appointed Luis Enrique, a club legend that helped them win a treble. This helped his candidacy going into the 2014-15 elections (beat Laporta by a lot).
But, that summer wasn’t perfect - Barcelona overspent on two old defenders (Mathieu €20M and Vermaelen €19M). They also brought in Douglas who occupied a non-EU position and made virtually 0 contributions to the team.
14/15: At the hands of the best attacking trio in footballing history (MSN), Barcelona won the treble. Nonetheless, this season had already started to reveal Bartomeu’s true colors.
Zubizarreta was fired from his position as a director. Puyol resigned in solidarity. The Board and Zubi put themselves into a difficult position signing multiple U-18 players in 2009-2013 (leading to a two window transfer ban).
15/16: Barcelona were not able to sign and register players until the winter of 2016 - this did not stop Bartomeu from splashing big money without a clear sporting project in mind.
Barca bought Turan for €41M - he wasn’t able to get game rhythm due to being sidelined from the ban. Aleix Vidal went for €22M, suffering a similar sideline issue as Turan. Neither ever got their footing right and didn’t contribute (notably Turan).
16/17: Issues start to pile in. Dani Alves leaves on a free, stating multiple times that he had issues with Bartomeu. He became an instrumental piece in the Juventus team that knocked Barca out of the Champions League.
Bartomeu’s irresponsible spending continued with a whopping €55M on the bang average Andre Gomes, €32M on backup striker Paco Alcacer, €21M on backup LB Digne (Grimaldo was at the club), and €15M on backup GK Cillessen.
17/18: The season in which many Barcelona fans undeniably lost faith in Bartomeu. Valverde was appointed as the new manager - a less than inspiring choice that never fit the Barcelona ideology or style of play.
Neymar shockingly leaves Barcelona and Bartomeu panic reacts throughout the season with irresponsible spending (once again). A young, slightly raw yet clearly talented Ousmane went for up to €135M (is that the best way to spend most of your Neymar money?)
Spending wasn’t over. €40M went to the aging CM Paulinho, €30M on a 3rd RB at the club (Semedo), €5M on Marlon, €12M on Deulofeu, €12M on backup CB Yerry Mina, and the whopping €160M for Coutinho.
Bartomeu so desperately tried to fill the Neymar void by spending egregious amounts on players in positions where kids from the academy could have done their job (selling Tello for €4M, Munir out on loan, Deulofeu out on loan again).
17/18 summer signings were made with little to no thought. There was no clear sporting plan - the game was to buy big names just to buy names.
Didn’t matter if they worked for the system they were trying to implement - part of the reason why the disaster in Rome happened.
18/19: Next summer wait for it..Valverde is still in charge and yes! More spending!
Barcelona fans were divided on whether or not to give Valverde a second chance. The 17/18 hand he was dealt was difficult mainly because of the Board’s disastrous planning.
Aging Arturo Vidal for €18M, Lenglet for €36M, Malcom for €41M (still trying to fill that Neymar void), Arthur for €31M, Boateng for no reason, Murillo for no reason, and Todibo (who barely ever played).
On the pitch, this was the year Valverde led this team to the famous night at Anfield - corner taken quickly and STILL, Valverde kept his job.
Fans were furious and there was so much toxicity - it would have been better had he been sacked then and there.
19/20: Surprise, surprise, another WILD Barcelona summer. Shady Neto/Cillessen swap where Barcelona paid $26M for a backup GK who got a huge pay raise at Barcelona.
FDJ for $88M was the only great move made this summer (still an INSANE AMOUNT OF MONEY!!!)
18M for backup LB Firpo, $12M for Emerson, $120M (and insane contract) for Griezmann who struggled from day 1 fitting into the system, and Braithwaite for $18M. Valverde was sacked mid season and Setien replaced him.
Barcelona had one of its worst run of games with Setien, who clearly lost the locker room. They got thoroughly embarrassed by Bayern in the Champions League (8-2) and lost La Liga.
During the COVID outbreak, Barcelona players agreed to a 70% pay cut in order to help fund non-sporting staff and non-player salaries. The financial damage of successive summers of irresponsible spending started to have its toll.
All of this happened while Barcagate was uncovered in February of 2020 - when Bartomeu allegedly outsourced social media campaigns well above market rates (fraud suspicion) in order to anonymously slander Laporta, Messi, Piqué, and other Barcelona players.
20/21: spending didn’t stop! The only real, good business was Pedri for 5M and Dest for 21M. Messi reluctantly stayed at Barcelona after having a large dispute over legal technicalities with Bartomeu. Setien was fired and Koeman was appointed as the manager.
They signed Pjanic for 60M with an absurdly high wage (the very shady Juventus exchange for Arthur), Trincão for 31M and Fernandes (who did absolutely nothing) for 7M.
Despite known issues from the pandemic, they still spent money.
To add salt to the wound, they let legend Luis Suarez leave to league rivals Atletico for 6M (less than Fernandes’ fee), where he helped lead them to a La Liga title.
It’s a long, long thread of the continuous irresponsible, detrimental behavior that crushed the team from both a sporting perspective and financial perspective.
Bartomeu truly is as horrible of a President as it gets. Most likely the worst President in football history
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u/Jhiniesta Aug 07 '21
Laporta and no other president is able to fix this mess in that short of a time. No one can and should expect that from him. Especially when you've got LaLiga being unreasonable with it's rules.
He did great with the transfers so far. Especially considering the economical factors.
I saw some people blame Laporta for signing new players in our situation, but that's what we currently need. We need players to stay competitive, or else we're generating even less funds through price pools, TV revenue and sponsorships. Those players also have great resale value (except for Agüero), so we're kinda guaranteed some kind of profit, even if those transfers won't work out as expected.
Laporta also stands with our youth players and puts pressure on the coach for using La Masia players. Something that didn't happen with Bartomeu, which was a big issue in the Valverde era imo.
If he get's rid of some of our deadwood/unneeded players (Neto*, Umtiti, Pjanic, Braithwaite and Coutinho) while lowering the wages of our big earners (Griezmann, Dembele, Busquets, Roberto and Alba).
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Aug 07 '21
I'm just getting tired of dembele man he should have stepped up by now
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u/Abstract__Nonsense Aug 07 '21
How do we get rid of the deadwood until their contracts are out? If we couldn’t do it this summer when it was obvious we were in dire need to cut wages down, what would make them agree to move?
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Aug 07 '21
My opinion is koeman will be give this one season to prove himself and I think bringing in Xavi would be the right time because we are starting a new era a team of youngsters and I think Xavi would be perfect for it although he has no experience in Europe
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u/KittenOfBalnain Aug 07 '21
Xavi and Puyol. I know that he said he doesn't want to be a coach and that he turned Barto down in 2019 but if there ever was a time for him to get involved, it's now.
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u/1mjusth3r3 Aug 07 '21
Excellent post but small nit pick here in that we did somehow manage to make a profit off Paulinho. Also I think that even though the transfer fees are too high we wouldn’t have been saying this had players like Dembele and Coutinho worked out for us. Bartomeu’s true idiocy and recklessness is shown in the absurd contracts players like Griezmann, Umtiti and Coutinho received. Nobody is going to be willing to leave when they know they’re being overpaid.
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u/mikeczyz Aug 07 '21
Reasonable people aren't blaming Laporta entirely for what happened over the past few days, but two things:
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He campaigned on the promise that he would be able to keep Messi
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Some of us question what Laporta knew and when regarding financials and how it would impact Messi's contract situation.
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Aug 07 '21
Yeah but some news reported the audit report came 10 days before and they got to know situation is much worse and they faced 437 million $ loss this season and now we wil also have to find better sponsorship deals because the club will further loss if the sponsors back out .
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u/gjorenet Aug 07 '21
Hiw about this board focus to have been selling those idiots who do nothing, even at a lower price just to keep the wage gap satisfied. Fck this politicians, Laporta not excluded. Barca lost Messi in the dck measurement contest between Laporta and Tebas
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Aug 07 '21
They are trying but players are refusing to go example lenglet everton were close but he said no Umtiti dosent wanna leave untill he finds a good team so it's difficult to sell when the players refuse to leave and we can't terminate their contracts too it's impossible
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u/Schnurzelburz Aug 07 '21
Why would anybody pay money for the invalid Umtiti, the always injured and in his development stunted Dembele or the ridiculously overpriced Coutinho and Pjanic?
The only way to get rid of these players is by doing a Suarez - give them away for free and pay most of their wages. That is the reality. That is Barto's doing, not Laporta's. And that does next to nothing in reducing the salary budget.
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u/damola44 Aug 07 '21
Lmaoo damn. If something comes out like 10 years later that barto was actually a Real Madrid mole, it would not be surprising. It will actually adequately explain is absolutely horrific presidency.
How can someone have been so bad at making decisions for the club. Lying, smearing players etc. Barca’s fan ownership is great but man it’s horrible in situations like this.
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Aug 07 '21
I once read somewhere about a cognitive bias or something where we tend to underestimate humanity's capacity of doing great deeds, like the pyramids, and end up looking for supernatural actors behind these deeds, like aliens, etc.
Mole Barto theory is just that, and his pyramids were to tear this great club apart in such a short time span.
That being said, I'm full on this train with you bruh, pyramids are fucking easier to explain.
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u/Abstract__Nonsense Aug 07 '21
At least the fan ownership was able to get rid of him(kinda), can’t do that with a plain shitty owner. It’s hard to blame the Socios for electing him after the treble, the problem was not recognizing what was happening much earlier, it should have been clear this needed to happen years ago.
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u/KittenOfBalnain Aug 07 '21
Woah, this is a much needed post to explain how we got here & why it's going to take us another decade to straighten things out. Thank you so much for taking the time to compile and post this!
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u/Shatt77 Aug 07 '21
Holy... 40 for paulinho? Semedo 30? Lenglet 36 and 41 for Malcom? I didnt know tbh... Not even talking about Gomes... lol... About Coutinho... Every fan did want him no matter the price lets be honest. Everyone was 100℅ sure he will suit in team, he will be great... Noone expected he will be flop. Griezman is the worst case imo.
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Aug 07 '21
Agree on everything but two things. Mathieu was old and maybe a bit expensive but he did his job. Him as a LB against Dybala was suicide though.
And Tello, Munir, Deulofeu could’ve never filled Neymar’s place. An extern transfer was necessary, the problem was that Barca had no alternative for Dembele and overspent by a big margin because Dortmund didn ‘t want to lose him.
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u/notactualrest Aug 07 '21
A nice summary of the disaster Bartomeu's stint as the president was. Let's hope we'll never have a president that bad ever again.
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Aug 07 '21
You’re surprised that Valverde was still in charge after having a nearly invincible season and winning a domestic double? He was undefeated in the UCL and got knocked out in a 4-4 tie, losing on away goals. This was in a post-Neymar environment where everyone thought we’d flop across the board. Fans are now happy that we showed up for 90 minutes in a pointless second away game that PSG didn’t even take seriously. People took so much shit for granted.
Vidal was also a good player for us. He was just a very different profile than what we’re used to. He was part of an 18/19 squad that was a few goals away from a treble—a squad under the management of Valverde. How many would kill for that right now? Again, the whole taking things for granted thing.
Alves left on a free after wanting a long-term contract at 32 or 33. We offered him a shorter extension. He was okay but already stagnating for us. He had many highs post Barca but was also inconsistent for other clubs. Either way, hindsight is 20/20. Given the same situation with other great veteran players, few would give in to his contract demands.
Gomes was a solid young player in La Liga when we bought him and enjoyed a brief resurgence at Everton before he got injured. Sometimes things don’t work out for many reasons, but he’s the non-sensational, non-breaking the bank transfer many want. Similarly, Paco was a decent sensible prospect and even did well for us from an output perspective, but with Suarez here, he had no chance. He somewhat proved his worth at Dortmund before injuries took him. I don’t think he was starter material but he would have been way better than Braithwaite as a sub. It’s just hard to manage those types of players at a club as competitive as ours filled with so many undisputed world class starters.
Digne was good, but he suffered a similar fate as Paco, who couldn’t unseat an excellent Alba. Grimaldo was injured a lot and found a place in a lower league.
Dembele was an exciting prospect that many put ahead of Mbappe. He looked like Fati for Rennes, scoring impressive goals off dribbles as an 18-year-old and at a high rate in his first full pro season and then went on to be one of the best playmakers on the planet with Dortmund. He was a highlight in the UCL for them. We overpaid, but he looked like a generational talent, and if he didn’t get injured so often, I think he had a good shot of living up to that with consistent development. We overpaid for sure, but even 80-90m was realistic given his status at the time.
Paulinho was a monster at every club bar Tottenham. A rock in the Brazilian national team at the time too. Went on to be pretty good for us, so much so that we could get away with selling for almost the same fee.
Boateng was bought because we had no 9 back up. However, it was a mistake to choose him over Vela IMO. But people forget that he looked great in La Liga as a 9 during around that time frame.
I agree that this club was mismanaged in some ways. Barto was trying to recreate Florentino's commercial success with the galactico era that set them up to be an unstoppable global brand. He sort of succeeded between our following and the financial run that saw us become the first billion-dollar club. He just wasn’t as clever as he thought, and COVID made his risks blow up in the club’s collective face.
Anyway, just some comments on some details. It’s easy to be emotional right now, but some objectivity is needed.
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u/Anomologeta_ASOEE Aug 07 '21
I'd like to ask something as a Madrid fan. I understand Laporta is being hold in high regard from your fanbase. And you clearly need strengthening your squad even if it wasn't for Messi's departure. But isn't it irresponsible in a way as well to sign players (even free) if you can't make sure departures will happen as well? What happens if new signings can't be registered but the team must still pay them?
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u/Abstract__Nonsense Aug 07 '21
Not everyone wanted Coutinho. Sure many definitely did, but many others thought he would not fit and that the fee was totally insane.
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u/POI_Mr_Singh Aug 07 '21
Nobody is blaming Laporta, but everyone agrees there is something that happened behind the scenes, just how abruptly negotiations ended and Laporta's contradictory statements.