Barcelona will NOT risk financial security to sign Haaland, insists Laporta

Martin Macdonald

• 26 Mar 2022 09:06 GMT
• 2 min read

Barcelona president Joan Laporta insists the club will not risk further financial turmoil to sign Borussia Dortmund superstar Erling Haaland.

When Laporta returned as club president in 2021, he revealed that Barcelona were in debt up to €1.3 billion.

Since then, Barca have been trying to cut costs as much as possible, and new league salary regulations meant that they were unable to keep Lionel Messi around, with the Argentine subsequently joining Paris Saint-Germain.

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Even though finances are not great, the Blaugrana were still extremely active in the January transfer window, signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Arsenal, Ferran Torres from Manchester City and Adama Traore on loan from Wolves.

Torres cost €55m.

Though Barcelona will spend again this summer to continue their squad rebuild under Xavi, the days of scattergun spending appear to be over.

Barca are one of a number of clubs linked with Haaland, who has emerged as the hottest property in the transfer market over the past 12 months.

The Norwegian has proved himself a goalscoring machine, and in the 2021/22 season alone has 23 goals in just 19 starts in all competitions.

Haaland has a release clause of €75m that can be activated this summer, but subsequent payments on wages and agents fees could see the outlay on any deal reach double that amount.

What has Laporta said about Haaland?

Laporta refused to specifically name Haaland, but when asked about the player he insisted Barcelona must continue to act maturely with regards to finances.

"I insist, I will not talk about specific players but I can tell you that we will not carry out any operation that puts the institution at risk," the Barca president told Mundo Deportivo.

"It has been a maxim that we have followed since we became president again, it happened to us in various circumstances and we are going to continue with this philosophy, not to put the institution at risk with operations that, not even if we were already healthy, we would.

"So, you can talk about players, about big-money operations in which Barca is not going to lose its head.

"That the fans are calm because we are not going to lose our heads for an operation of these magnitudes.

"Most of the players want to come to Barca, they like the club, the team, our philosophy, our way of working, of understanding football. And this is good, we are verifying it in many cases and daily.

"They will have to adapt to the salary levels of Barca and to an economic structure of the operation that maintains the sustainability and balance of the club."