Barcelona face unprecedented Olmo registration NIGHTMARE

Tom Weber

• Updated: 17 Dec 2024 11:03 GMT
• 4 min read

Barcelona have made little progress in generating the funds to register Dani Olmo before the December 31 deadline, according to a report.

The Blaugrana are once again finding themselves in a real mess. In the summer, they splashed the cash on former La Masia product Dani Olmo, paying a fee reported to be worth as much as €62 million, though president Joan Laporta has insisted that the club paid just €47m.

Be that as it may, the fact of the matter is that Barcelona didn't have the available salary space to register the Spain international and had to offload several players in the summer.

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Still, that wasn't enough and the club also had to utilise an injury to Andreas Christensen to make use of LaLiga's Article 77 which allows them to register someone for 80 per cent of an injured player's salary if the fitness problem is expected to keep him out for at least four months.

As The Athletic now points out, even that was not enough to fully register Olmo, with LaLiga forced to create an entirely new rule to allow Olmo to play for the first half of the season.

Barcelona's Olmo nightmare

Olmo's permit expires on December 31 and Barcelona will have to register him anew by that point. The problem is that they can't as things stand. The club's lucrative new Nike deal has yet to be officially ratified and will not be enough to help solve the 'Olmo case.'

With just two weeks left until the deadline, Barcelona look increasingly unlikely to find a timely solution. If Barcelona fail to register him, Olmo will not be eligible to play again this season.

Failure to meet the deadline would mean that Barcelona would have to request a new license for Olmo but players in LaLiga are only permitted to have one license per season as they are generally valid for the entire duration of their contracts, which isn't the case for the 26-year-old.

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With potential registration problems in mind, Olmo included a clause in his contract that would allow him to leave the club for free should they be unable to include him in their squad.

While this is nothing new as far as Barcelona signings are concerned, the club have never found themselves in a position where this actually became a real, legitimate threat - until now.

Olmo remains committed to his boyhood club, but the report states that it is unlikely that the player would remain if he can't play for the rest of the season.

One potential last-minute solution could be a board member agreeing a bank guarantee and risking their personal wealth to register the player as president Joan Laporta did last year with the loan signings of Joao Cancelo and Joao Felix.