From the crisis to the most spending units. How can Barcelona, despite its financial problems, shop for such money?

If you don’t follow what’s going on in the Spanish league, you might be surprised by Barcelona’s transfers. The club, which is drowning in a huge financial crisis, is currently the third biggest spender in Europe. How is that possible?

Barcelona have already made five signings in the summer transfer window. Franck Kessie, Andreas Christensen, Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha and Ousmane Dembélé. The latter, although already a Barcelona player, did not renew his contract but signed a new one after the old one expired, thus officially becoming a new player, which creates another problem. But we will get to that.

Kessie and Christensen arrived for free, Lewandowski for €45m + €5m in bonuses, Raphinha for €58m, another €10m may come in bonuses.

And watch out, Barcelona don’t stop there. From Sevilla they still want to bring Jules Koundé, whose price is around 60-80 million euros, from Chelsea the Catalans are still attracting Cesar Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso.

The total amount so far is €103m, only Manchester City (€108m) and Leeds (€105m) spent more in the summer transfer window. But both Premier League sides are in a positive balance of buys and sales, with the Citizens in the black by €13m and Leeds €1m. The Catalans have sold players for just €25m, and so are in the negative €78m.

Selling off the club

So how is it possible that Barcelona, which is drowning in a major financial crisis, can afford this? President Joan Laporta has literally sold off part of the club. He has sold 25% of the television rights and 49% of the BLM rights (merch). He has sold his club’s wealth for 25 years in advance and should collect 800 million euros.

This is the money that Barcelona is currently spending so lavishly. But in terms of the future, it is absolute nonsense. By selling their rights, the Culés will lose a huge amount of money in the future, which will then be missing from the budget. It would be understandable if the club used the money to pay its debts, but Laporta is using the money for transfers.

So maybe Laporta will shoot the money that was supposed to be added to the budget every year in the future in the transfer market. If he has already spent 100 million out of 800 million in one month, how will it go? At this point, €50 million for a 34-year-old player, no matter how good, is extremely exorbitant.

The need to sell

But Barcelona also run into financial fair-play. According to UEFA regulations, every club must balance revenue and expenditure, which is a big issue at Barcelona. So the Blaugranas have to sell some players at any cost and are trying to get rid of Frenkie de Jong, for whom Manchester United are willing to pay €75 million.

But there is a catch, the Dutch midfielder does not want to leave the sunny Catalan capital. Another problem is that the club owes de Jong €17 million in wages from last season and still has yet to pay up.

Until Barcelona pay the amount owed, de Jong will not even begin to consider leaving. By the way, how must the Dutchman feel when Barcelona are unable to pay him what is in his contract and then cheerfully announce €100 million worth of transfers?

Salary cap

But Barcelona’s problems don’t end there. While only last year few people knew this information, after Lionel Messi’s departure it’s worldwide knowledge. The Spanish league has a salary cap, which is set by the league to the clubs individually according to their performance in previous years. This is to prevent clubs from getting so far in debt that they become insolvent.

And it’s the salary cap that the Culés are struggling enormously with. Last year, Messi had to leave his beloved club because he did not fit into the salary cap and could not take a pay cut of more than 50% under the law. In the winter, again, it took about 3 weeks for Barcelona to find a way to add new signing Ferran Torres to the roster, eventually having to cut the salaries of other players.

And this year, they will face the same problem again. Kessie, Christensen, Raphinha, Lewandowski and Dembélé may already be Barcelona players, but the Catalans can’t register them yet. So they can’t be on the roster and they can’t start games.

And this is where we come to Dembélé, as we indicated at the beginning. Should he extend his contract until June 30, he would still count as a Barcelona player. But since he only signed this week, the contract has to be registered as for a new player, adding another problem for the Catalans.

At the moment, Barcelona have to sell several players, otherwise they have no chance to register the new signings. But with de Jong’s reluctance to leave, there is hardly anyone left in the squad that the Blaugranas can properly monetise, unless you count Pedri, Gavi and Ansu Fati, who Barcelona are counting on for the future.

Laporta has until August 31 to find a way to create space under the salary cap and register new players. If he fails to do so, Lewandowski, Raphinha and co will only train for Barcelona until January and attend games in civvies in the stands.

Source: MARCA, Transfermarkt