From Messi, to a mess: Barcelona can't accept their status as a second-tier team
Paul Macdonald
- Updated: 13 Jun 2022 14:14 BST
- 4 min read
Barcelona are a club struggling to accept what is happening to them.
€1.3 Billion of debt. Free transfers for Franck Kessie and Andreas Christensen which might not be honoured. Spotify stadium deals. Allowing fans to play on the hallowed Camp Nou turf - for a fee. And get married while you are there too, because why not.
It’s a total mess, and president Joan Laporta has bluffed his way through it, maintaining that everything was fine, that the situation was manageable, when it clearly was not.
There’s no hiding place now. Laporta said this week that the club was ‘dead’ before he took over and now it is merely ‘in the ICU’. His vice-president Eduard Romeu followed this up by saying that €500m is needed to ‘save’ Barcelona.
Any and all measures are on the table. Selling off a percentage of future revenues from TV rights is very much being considered, while Frenkie De Jong, arguably the most valuable transfer asset, will likely be allowed to leave for Manchester United.
Memories of Miami 🇺🇸 #ElClásico pic.twitter.com/GRfTPxX3cN
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) June 11, 2022
And yet, amidst all of this smoke showing the building is on fire, the level of misdirection is bordering on the ludicrous.
Day after day the Spanish press, who rely on the metronomic transfer rumour mill in order to sell their sports dailies, continue to link the club with a whole list of players who have slim to no chance of ever being signed.
It started with Erling Haaland, who gave Barcelona the respect of having the late agent Mino Raiola go meet them, even though it was abundantly clear no deal would be done. And the list of unlikely signings has grown ever since. Joao Felix, Bernardo Silva, Marcus Rashford, Gabriel Jesus, Neymar. It’s absolute make-believe. Even a transfer that is wanted by literally every party - Robert Lewandowski - risks being hijacked by PSG as Barcelona try to find the money from somewhere, anywhere.
‘Finding’ €500m as Romeu has suggested is no easy task, nor is rebuilding a team that is suffering from an immense talent drain.
- FootballTransfersAnd then you have the Kessie and Christensen situations, combined further with rumours that terms have been agreed with Marcos Alonso and Cesar Azpilicueta, and it’s not just their own fans that are being strung along, but prospective talent, too.
But these latest statements from Laporta and Romeu are tacit acceptance that the club is now competing on a different financial plain, one where players need to be sold first to address the crippling money issues and any that are coming in are subject to money being found in order to pay them. ‘Finding’ €500m as Romeu has suggested is no easy task, nor is rebuilding a team that is suffering from an immense talent drain.
That’s the dilemma; have a team on the pitch worthy of Barcelona but control the crippling debt and years of mismanagement. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that these two ideas are so obviously incompatible, but no-one wants to address it.
It’s important to keep up the pretence that Barcelona is a coveted destination, that they will compete for things, that Xavi is building a team of players that he wants. But really, Xavi is largely being given what they can get, and not necessarily getting to keep the ones he wants to (Ousmane Dembele and, potentially, Gavi). It’s a bizarre game of keeping up appearances, while everyone knows the situation.
Related articles
And so we’re subject to this dance. Signings that will never come adorning the covers of Sport and El Mundo Deportivo, superagent Jorge Mendes arriving at Camp Nou to discuss transfers, Haaland being flirted with, all the while a debt mountain grows in the background that is threatening the very future of the organisation.
They are incompatible, and the mask is beginning to slip. The proud face is becoming marked with strain as the pretence fades. Barcelona, transfer behemoths, versus Barcelona, former super club, is a losing battle.
