Laporta explains why Barca can NOT afford Haaland this summer

FT Desk

• 14 Mar 2022 08:38 GMT
• 5 min read

Ever since Erling Haaland came to prominence at Borussia Dortmund in January 2020, Barcelona have always been touted as a favourite to sign the exciting young striker.

Whether it be as an accomplice to the evergreen Lionel Messi or, as fate would have it, as a successor to Barca’s most favoured son, Haaland’s name has seemingly never left the back pages of Spain’s biggest newspapers.

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Alongside an apparent interest from Real Madrid, the perceived wisdom has always been that Haaland is simply biding his time before he bid farewell to the Bundesliga and made his way to Spain.

Such has been the freny over the young Norway international that in early March, Spanish newspaper Sport reported that Barca manager Xavi had personally made the trip to Munich to visit and talk with Haaland as he was recovering from an injury.

As such, speculation around the player amounted to an overall assumption that a deal was in place and that Barca had won the race to sign the young player.

However, according to the club’s president Joan Laporta, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

What did Laporta say?

In a recent interview with TV3 on Sunday, Laporta was forced to bring Barca fans back down to reality when asked about the possibility of the club making a move for Haaland this summer.

As some may have conveniently forgotten, the Catalan giants are still in the midst of a financial crisis and despite cost-cutting measures that have seen Messi, Philippe Coutinho and Antoine Griezmann leave the club in one form or another, Laporta underlined why Haaland was still out of reach for the club.

"We're working on the future of the squad. Both [director of football] Mateu Alemany and [advisor] Jordi Cruyff are also looking for a certain rationality," said the Barca boss.

"We are here to manage a football club well. We are in a period that, although we are improving economically, it has not yet been solved.

"The economic situation has not been reversed and that is the priority.

"It is clear that we want an increasingly powerful team. We will go all out, but we will not do any operation that puts the institution at risk."