FC Barcelona
The Spanish Giants FC Barcelona has a big name when we talk about the history of football. They have won big European trophies, signed big players and developed talents in their young age. They have had great managers like Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique who have evolved this team to what it is today. The playing style, Tiki Taka has also come from the Spanish Giants. You guys might already know all of this, but recently their form has been terrible with Messi gone, no trophies won and nothing clicks for them. As their form has been so bad one thing that can change it is buying solid players, which they have done, but how? I am shocked because as it stands Barcelona has €1,3b in depth.
Picture by kappilrinesh from Pixabay
Why is this shocking
As I said before Barcelona has a depth of €1,3b which clearly means that you have to sell players, use the ticket sales, sponsorship money and more to be able to clear that depth. Instead, Juan Laporta, who is the President of Barcelona right now, has been signing players for fun. Barcelona has tried to sell a lot of players that don't perform for them but their only big exits have been Coutinho, Arthur and Nelson Semedo in terms of money. That means, they haven't sold enough players, so how can they still sign so many players? According to transfermarkt, Barcelona in season 22/23 Summer Transfer Window signed 7 big players. These 7 players are Raphinha, Kounde, Lewandowski, Kessie, Christensen, Bellerin and Alonso. Their income in that window was only €35.00m, and the expenditure (money spent) was €153.00m which means that their overall balance that season was €-118.00m. To have €-118.00 on one transfer window should not actually be something to be glad at, especially if you get knocked out of the Champions League despite all these crazy signings.
Where is the money coming from
As I said before the hope for Barcelona was and still is to win LaLiga and Champions League in order to get some money that they later can use to pay off their depth. So what they have done is that they first told their loyal players such as Jordi Alba, Gerard Pique and Busquets to lower their wages to register the new signings, because some of LaLiga rules are so strict, like you have to put release clause and that you can't go over an amount on the wages. Every club has something called third party income, which is mostly sponsorships and tv rights. They have actually sold 10% of their tv rights for next 25 years in order to get something around €207.5m, and with that money they are able to sign players. Another thing is that Barcelona just got new shirt sponsors which is Spotify, and by this deal they got €200m. They have also taken a loan of around €500m and are in the future planning to sell 49% of their stake. So the truth is that Barcelona dont have money and are not keen on clearing their depth, they are only willing to destroy their income by stopping it, taking out money and risking not being able to pay it back later. If we count almost everything we know they have taken out, it will be approximately €907.5m which is more than half of the depth paid. Instead they want to take this money, sign players, win trophies which aren't guaranteed and then pay it off. So if Barcelona doesn't win anything it might be a disaster for them in the future.
Picture from Newsroom.Sportify
Basically, Barcelona are in depth as I said before and they have the capacity of money to clear that depth, but instead they want to do it in a different way by using that money to buy players, win trophies and then by that money clear the depth. There is a risk that they might get a penalty from FIFA which can take them to a lower division or even get banned from the Champions League. Until now there is no one who has said anything about this thing, but let's see for how long Barcelona can survive by doing this.
Picture from Wikipedia