Pique retires a Barcelona legend with one final gesture
Suraj Radia
- 3 Nov 2022 19:07 GMT
- 3 min read
Gerard Pique will leave Barcelona as one of the greatest players in the club’s history, with his final act perhaps being his greatest contribution of all to his boyhood club.
The 35-year-old announced that Barcelona’s next game against Almeria will be his final match at Camp Nou before he calls time on his career that saw him win 30 trophies in 14 years with the club.
The timing of Pique’s announcement proved shocking but will provide huge relief to Barcelona as he is set to terminate the lucrative contract that he still had more than 18 months to run on.
END OF AN ERA: Pique calls time on his career
Barcelona were due to pay Pique roughly €29.5 million this season but reports have claimed that he will forego the remainder of that salary until June.
The club vice-captain is still due to earn a staggering €40.8m next season and it remains to be seen how that will be handled, but the decision to waive this year’s salary will undoubtedly aid Barcelona’s financial crisis.
Having devoted almost his entire career to the club, Pique’s decision to remove himself from Barcelona’s wage bill and allow the club to move on to a new era is one final act of loyalty and cements his status as a Camp Nou legend.
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Pique’s astronomical contract
Previous president Josep Maria Bartomeu had given Pique a contract worth a guaranteed €142m in 2018 that made him the highest-paid defender in the world at the time.
However, Pique had restructured the deal in 2020 to take a salary cut, in order to relieve the financial pressure on Barcelona, having seen teammate Lionel Messi leave due to the Catalan’s ballooning wage bill.
Current chief Joan Laporta has spent the majority of his tenure trying to curb the club’s wage bill and repeatedly tried to convince Pique and other high earners to take further salary cuts, even by indirectly criticising their refusal to do so in interviews.
Pique had also previously posted a picture of his wage slip after being called out by Spanish press for his large salary and the defender will likely end up writing off a significant portion of money through his retirement.
Barca spent more than €200m this summer on players despite owing large amounts of deferred wages to Pique and teammates such as Frenkie de Jong.
