Barcelona trying to defy the limits of financial and sporting logic – The Irish Times

Joan Laporta has always followed Johan Cruyff. Growing up, he cut his hair like Cruyff; In his first term as president of FC Barcelona, ​​the Dutchman, who changed the club and the game like no other, was his adviser, ideologue and spiritual leader.

And now, in Laporta’s second term, he is still his guiding spirit, even after his death.

“I always have Johan with me because of everything he taught; deep down, he still guides us,” says Laporta.

Cruyff’s son Jordi is the club’s sporting director and there’s a recurring question that those touched by Cruyff often ask, especially in moments of uncertainty: what would Johan say?

One of Cruyff’s most well-known maxims was “put your money on the pitch, not in the bank”. And that’s the plan, but it’s not that simple.

Last Sunday, 83,021 people packed the Camp Nou for the Gamper Trophy, Barcelona’s traditional presentation game, and watched a hugely impressive demolition by Pumas, with optimism flooding back.

It was a first, exciting look at a new era and new signings: Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, Jules Koundé, Frank Kessie and Andreas Christensen. The problem is they may not get a second six days when the season kicks off against Rayo Vallecano on Saturday night.

Including variables, Lewandowski cost Barcelona €50m. Koundé’s costs could rise to 62.5 million euros and Raphinha’s total fee is likely to reach around 70 million euros. There was also the signing of Ousmane Dembélé for €16m plus variables per season, a fortnight after he became a free agent and six months after he was told to leave.

No one has spent more than Barcelona this summer and they continue to pursue other signings including a right-back, Marcos Alonso and Bernardo Silva. All of this begs one question: how?

How could a club with €1.3bn in debt, with a salary cap set at minus €144m and posting losses of over €400m last year, a club described by its directors as ‘clinically dead’ and then ‘on the intensive care unit” was called? set up a team like that?

The short answer is you can’t, not yet. Barcelona face a race to make enough cuts by cutting salaries, moving players, or bringing in enough money to meet La Liga’s financial fair play criteria – an automated system designed to be preventative rather than punitive.

Far from Barcelona being allowed to get away with what they want, as the ill-informed complaint says – remember Lionel Messi? – La Liga has the strictest control in Europe.

Based on income and expenses, a salary limit is set by the league that defines what you can spend on your squad, across transfers, salaries and depreciation, and if you don’t stick to it you simply won’t be able to register in the system.

The focus is thus on building the best possible team in the short-term while meeting the criteria in every possible way. Barcelona can do it, albeit with a few players and they have until just before kick-off against Rayo Vallecano.

It’s also just a game – registration is open until the end of August – but the fact that they’ve reached this point is indicative of the problems inherent in their approach and at this time none of their signings or those with new ones can Contracts play against Reyo. That’s nine players waiting.

Barcelona have one goalkeeper, five defenders, six midfielders and four forwards at their disposal and these are not the ones they would like, a portrait of the difficulties they face and the risk they run when Laporta tries to starting what he is refers to a virtuous circle that will lift Barcelona out of the chaos he inherited.

Others are less convinced, concerned about the consequences, doubting that this can really be a solution in the long term, or resentful that they see it as missing.

Julian Nagelsmann, head coach of FC Bayern Munich, emphasized that Barcelona are the “only club in the world that has no money but then buys all the players they want. It’s a little weird, a little crazy. I don’t know how they do it.”

Here’s how, although whether it’s a good idea or applied in the best way is a different question. When Laporta took over the presidency last year, one of his first steps was to borrow €500 million from Goldman Sachs, which allowed them to restructure their debt.

Then there are what Barcelona call palancas or levers. It’s a word that’s entered not only the lexicon but almost a sort of football folklore, eclipsing everything else for the past few months, the summer of imagining Laporta standing in front of a heaving machine, sweating and frantically pull on levers.

There were a lot of them, a lot of signings too. Every time you thought this had to be it, a different player showed up and a different lever was pulled down. Just when they were convinced they couldn’t buy more, they did. And they’re not done yet, at least they hope so.

Essentially, pulling palancas means selling assets and raising cash against future earnings to balance your books. Normally for a football club that would mean players, but it’s not that easy when the few players you have for sale are reluctant to leave, so Barcelona have looked elsewhere.

The first Palanca came in late June with the sale of 10 per cent of their La Liga TV rights over the next 25 years to a company called Sixth Street.

The second came three weeks later, another 15 percent went to Sixth Street for 315 million euros. At the TV deal’s current value of €166m a year, that would mean handing over a total of €1867.5m over 25 years – bread for today, hunger for tomorrow, some fear – but Barcelona said the deals would bring capital to profit of 667 million euros immediately.

The third Palanca came in early August with the sale of nearly 24.5 percent of Barca Studios, the club’s content production company, to crypto firm Socios for €100m. And with the planned fourth, another 24.5 percent of Barca Studios would go to the GDA Luma investment fund for 100 million euros.

As it turns out, that deal was announced on Friday instead with Orpheus Media, owned by Jaume Roures, whose Mediapro company is La Liga’s broadcasting partner. At the general meeting, Barcelona’s board had also been given the power to sell up to 49.9 per cent of the club’s merchandising and licensing arm, BLM.

Meanwhile, they continued to try to cut costs, demanding departures for players and pay cuts for those who stayed.

Philippe Coutinho, Clemente Lenglet and Oscar Mingueza were among those who left. Samuel Umtiti tries to secure an exit. Pressure has been put on Martin Braithwaite and more particularly Frenkie de Jong who has been told to leave or accept a 50 per cent cut in his salary which will cost Barcelona over €30m next year. He is already entitled to 18 million euros in deferred payments.

There was even a letter from the club informing them that the renewal he signed under the previous regime could be part of a series of four renewals they claim were fraudulent – which by De Jong’s camp is viewed as an attempt to challenge him. However, he remains adamant about his desire to keep going, even when things get toxic.

When Barcelona introduced Koundé, Laporta claimed that after also signing a new sponsorship deal with Spotify worth around €70m a year, Barcelona raised €868m in just two months.

“We believe we can register the players with everything we’ve done,” he said. “The risk is controlled: we did it to save the club and sign players. Hopefully we don’t have to pull more levers. If there is a situation that obliges us to do this, we will think about it. The interpretation of the fair play rules has its complexity. I hope our interpretation is the same as the league’s.”

It wasn’t, and so they had to pull more. The league didn’t accept the calculation of the first two palancas, judging that Barcelona had used 150 million euros of their own money to inflate the value of the deals and informing them that they always exceeded the threshold from which they could freely register players had not yet achieved.

After all, the distance to the minus 144 million euros marginal salary in March, the last public figures, and the 560 million euros in salary that they actually had was huge. And that mass had increased over the summer. On Friday the fourth lever was pulled, Roures came to the rescue.

These papers had to be submitted to the league for review, with no guarantee that they would be completed in time for Saturday night.

Barcelona also shared that according to their calculations they would need another 20 or 30 million euros to register all their players in time for the opening night of the season and so the meetings continued, everything accelerated towards the opening night.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who only joined in January, could be next to go. Memphis Depay, who was registered just in time for last season’s opening day but only after Gerard Piqué took a pay cut to bring Barcelona under the limit and whose No 9 shirt was given to Lewandowski, could follow. And still De Jong fights back.

If there are sales, they are unlikely to be cleared in time for Saturday. Meanwhile, Piqué, who is reportedly over €50m in salary, has been urged to accept further cuts, as have Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba.

The clock is ticking, the pressure is building and fans are waiting to see if the season starts with the money on the pitch or in the stands. – Guardian