How Barcelona blew €1 BILLION on transfers after selling Neymar

Paul Macdonald

• Updated: 13 Jun 2022 16:04 BST
• 4 min read

Barcelona's current financial predicament can be traced almost entirely back to Neymar.

Allowing PSG to sign him for a world-record €220 million fee set off a chain of events which led to massive transfer misfires, mountains of wages and agents fees, and a level of debt that means that the club is facing its biggest crisis in a generation.

So how did they manage to waste almost a billion Euro in the five years since the Brazilian departed for Paris?

We break down all of Barcelona's deals since and grade them.

KEY:

- HIT ✅

- 50/50 ❓

- MISS ❌

The beginning of the disaster can be found here, in arguably the worst summer of transfer business ever conducted by any club.

With the Neymar money burning a hole in their pocket, they opted to to spend it - and a whole lot more, on a series of duds that contributed nothing.

Coutinho is an all-time bust, being forced to compete for space with Lionel Messi, and there was only ever going to be one winner there. Dembele may have latterly come good but didn't come close to justifying his unbelievable fee. Nelson Semedo, Gerard Deulofeu and Yerry Mina would eventually recoup their money back, but they made zero impact on the Barca team.

The only player who was even a moderate success was Paulinho, who enjoyed a better spell than people remember at Camp Nou.

The following season saw more bad spending on simply average players that were never going to elevate Barcelona to the next level.

A late-career Vidal did late-career Vidal things in a passable way but the dynamism was long gone, while Clement Lenglet has proved to be a useful central defensive asset, if never becoming the cast-iron starter alongside Gerard Pique that they truly needed.

But the other two; Arthur was ultimately utilised in a horror-show swap deal with Juventus and Miralem Pjanic, while Malcom was a flat-out disaster, one who barely played and was simply wrong place at the wrong time.

It really doesn't get any better. Antoine Griezmann is a good, maybe great, player, but the Messi problem impacted him as well, as they both struggled to compete in the same team. His gigantic salary is also a problem which continues to haunt them.

De Jong should have been a slam dunk; a natural Barcelona player in every capacity, he's just arrived at the wrong time and while he has performed better than people perceive, it's destined to end in his departure.

The rest of the list is utterly nightmarish; though Firpo and Emerson are now in the Premier League they never convinced at Camp Nou and were liabilities in defensive positions.

Neto was a bizarre, pointless expensive addition who barely featured, while Braithwaite's situation is unfortunate. Brought in when Luis Suarez suffered a knee injury, he never got the chance to hit the ground running as coronavirus was just around the corner, exacerbating all of the financial problems further.

Ouch. The coronavirus situation bit hard, meaning doing good business was much harder, and this selection of signings certainly wasn't the answer.

The Pjanic situation, as described above, was more of an accountancy trick from Bartomeu which saw Arthur move in the opposite direction.

Trincao is still there, though spent last season on loan at Wolves, and Barca will be confident they can make some money back on him, though he never looked like being good enough to feature regularly.

And the Matheus Fernandes signing, which ended with the Brazilian leaving a parting shot, is best left undiscussed.

It's largely hard to judge whether any of last season's arrivals will truly prove to be good or bad, but it's not looking particularly good for some of them.

Certainly Depay's transfer hasn't had the impact Barca would have liked, while Garcia has some making up to do after a season impinged by injury, suspension and poor performances.

Aubameyang had some memorable appearances after signing in January, while much more will be expected of Ferran Torres going into next season.