Barcelona will leave the Nou Camp for renovations. Where will it play its home games?

All stadiums will have to do it one day, but many clubs are haunted by the word. The Nou Camp, the home shrine of FC Barcelona, is no exception. Construction work is expected to take several years, the club president has also stated how long Barcelona’s players will play in so-called exile.

Next year, the Catalan big club will start the long-planned renovation of its home stadium.

The club’s president, Joan Laporta, confirmed that the Blaugrana will play their home games elsewhere for at least a year. But where? This, too, is now clear. For next season, Barcelona will move to the Johan Cruyff Stadium, which is part of the training complex.

The women’s team normally plays here. At the moment, this stadium has a capacity of 6,000 spectators, which the club management plans to increase by up to 44,000 due to the aforementioned reasons.

“We are considering various options, but the main candidate is the Johan Cruyff stadium, ” Laporta told Catalan radio Rac1 in an interview.

“The new stadium is crucial for the club’s functioning and its immediate future. It will have an important impact on Barca because it will allow us to compete with our rivals who have already done what was necessary,” he added.

Obviously, the question now is how Barcelona can handle such a financial burden when they posted a staggering loss of 481 million euros last season.

The club’s management is in talks with the investment bank Goldman Sachs to finance the reconstruction, which could see Barcelona obtain a loan of one and a half billion euros. However, the financial plan has yet to be approved by all members of the club’s management.

The current capacity of the stadium is 99 000 free seats. After the renovation, which is expected to take three to four years, this figure is expected to rise to 110 000 seats. The stadium’s surroundings will also be improved.

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