Barcelona in minus! La Liga publishes new salary cap, Catalans are in dire straits

While on the pitch Barcelona is experiencing an upturn, on the books it is still very bad. La Liga has published updated salary caps for all clubs in the top two competitions, with the Catalans being the only ones in negative figures.

In Spain, unlike other European competitions, there is a salary cap, which you know from the NHL or NFL, for example. It is designed to prevent clubs from getting into financial difficulties or even bankruptcy. This is one of the reasons why La Liga teams cannot engage in financial races with teams from the Premier League or PSG.

Each club has a salary cap calculated individually on the basis of several factors, including revenues, costs and debts. The cap is then proportional to roughly 70% of the club’s revenue.

Due to the huge crisis of the Blaugranas, La Liga management cut Barcelona’s ceiling first in 2019 from €670 million to €385 million. But that wasn’t enough, so in the summer La Liga cut the Catalans’ cap to 97 million euros. So Barcelona couldn’t sign Messi, they had to let Griezmann leave as well. Piqué, Alba, Busquéts and Sergi Roberto also had to take drastic pay cuts.

But six months have passed and President Joan Laporta seems to have forgotten all about the salary cap. In the winter, he brought in players headlong, with Dani Alves, Ferran Torres, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Adama Traoré arriving at Camp Nou in succession.

Thus, La Liga has published an updated salary cap and Barcelona are now at a minus of 144 million euros. Thus, it may have huge problems in the summer that will not be easy to solve.

For example, it may have to sell some high salary players in the summer transfer window and the management will have to work magic to fit the salary cap. So the dream Haaland can probably be forgotten at the moment.

The leader is Real Madrid, whose financial side is exemplary. Its ceiling is set at €739 million, the club did not spend a euro in the winter, so it has remained in the same place.

Sevilla are also in great financial shape, keeping their salary cap at 200 million euros. Third placed Atlético Madrid has a ceiling of 161 million euros.

And how is it possible that nothing is being done about it? If a club like Elche or Alavés had similar transgressions, they would have been sanctioned by the management long ago to the extent that they would have wandered into the second, maybe even the third league.

But Barcelona is the biggest name in the league with Real Madrid and the competition cannot afford to lose such a giant. That’s why league president Javier Tebas is turning a bit of a blind eye, even though a huge wave of criticism from the media and the public has risen in Spain following the latest disclosure. And it may very well be that there will be no more cronyism.

Source: Marca