Enough lying about Frenkie de Jong. Barcelona don’t owe him a single euro

Don’t believe everything the English media in particular writes about the Frenkie de Jong situation. Every day there are unconfirmed reports that Barcelona owe their player a wage. More precisely, he is said to be holding him hostage and thus preventing him from moving to Manchester United.

“Frenkie De Jong should consider legal action against FC Barcelona and the players should get behind him. The club spending a fortune on new players while not paying those under contract is immoral and a breach.

FIFPRO (the global organisation representing 65,000 professional football players) should be all over bullying like this and put a stop to it,” Gary Neville wrote on his Twitter account. But let’s set the record straight.

FC Barcelona currently pay their players a wage who are under contract with the club. However, during the difficult global pandemic situation, some have agreed with the club’s management to extend their contract and then defer their wages. It must therefore be said that the information that the club is not paying any money to the players is a false report that continues to spread.

The players have therefore extended their contracts and deferred their wages of their own volition. The only time the situation becomes a problem is if a player transfers to another club. In this case, Barcelona then has the option of saying that it will not pay the footballer in question the deferred amount and there may be problems.

For this reason, many may think that Barcelona are forcing de Jong to stay because of the additional wage payment. The Catalan big club has to pay him up to 16 million euros over the next four seasons.

Yes, it is true that Barcelona have not yet paid every cent to Frenkie under the agreed contract, which was renegotiated during the coronavirus pandemic. To suggest otherwise, despite their risky behaviour, is therefore an absolutely meaningless report.

Frenkie de Jong, meanwhile, remains at Barcelona and is therefore still bound by the renegotiated contract. The Blaugranas are doing nothing wrong. Only if he does indeed decide to leave and the club refuses to pay him, then we can all start questioning their legal practices together.

The De Jong name issue has been dragging on for some time, but it’s not until the upcoming season that it is set to escalate. Let’s take a look at Barcelona’s estimated player wages ahead of the 2022/23 season, and also what Barcelona’s wages are compared to the rest of LaLiga.

Currently, Barcelona’s most experienced players – Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba – earn the most. They are followed in the salary hierarchy by new signings Robert Lewandowski and De Jong. However, players like Gerard Pique, Miralem Pjanic, and Mempis Depay are paid similarly to them. The latter two in particular are unlikely to be part of Xavi’s starting lineup.

So this begs the question: If the club manages to sell Pjanic and Depay and negotiate a reduction in the captains’ wages, does de Jong really have to leave? In any case, it is a good move to limit all wages to below 10 million euros a year, otherwise Barcelona may end up like Real Madrid. Really crazy that Eden Hazard on 600k euros a week and only recently played his first El Clasico.

Source: David Kvapil, Twitter