Despite its financial crisis, FC Barcelona has been the great protagonist of the summer market with up to six reinforcements and an investment of more than 150 million euros (without including the variable). This was possible thanks to the activation of the financial “levers” approved by the directive and the partners, a strategy which did not escape the attention of UEFA and the European Club Association (ECA, for its acronyms in English).
In this sense, the maximum body of European football analyzes whether or not the strategy put in place by Barça goes against precepts that financial “Fair Play” will impose from the 2023-24 season: solvency, stability and cost control. For the culé group, the sale of assets was the only way out of the shortage of money and the cuantiosas debts accumulated by the management led by Josep Bartomeu.
This is how Barça managed to manage the sale of 25% of its LaLiga television rights for the next 25 years and the sale of 49% of Barça studios, negotiations that left the club with a total of 867.5 million euros needed to unlock wage bills, strengthen the staff and adapt to La Liga’s financial “Fair Play”. Now UEFA is assessing whether the financial strategy culled is legitimate or whether, on the contrary, poses a threat to the financial stability of the clubs, since it is very likely that other teams will seek to emulate the one carried out by Joan Laporta this summer. to solve its gearbox problems.
For the moment, Barça is one of the clubs investigated by the European body for financial irregularities in the economic exercise of the 2021-22 season. Laporta reached the file with four players in winter (Dani Alves, Ferran Torres, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Adama Traoré, yielded by six months), but the accounts could not be aligned according to the normative UEFA. In October will announce economic and sporting sanctions against 10 clubs for problems in the 2020-21 season. The following year, Barça could have the same chance.
PSG and English clubs, sheltered from ‘Fair Play’
Although Paris Saint-Germain are one of the clubs studied by UEFA by their management of signings in 2021-22, it is clear that the French group measure them with another vara. The power of catarí money makes UEFA more “benevolent” with a PSG that has money to spend. The origin is the least. The same success with Manchester City and other English clubs. In reality, any club in the Premier League has “Fair Play” problems, despite having carried, as a group, more than 1,800 “kilos” in signatures in the midst of the post-pandemic crisis. Will he approve the ‘crowbar’ model patented by Laporta at UEFA? In the weeks to come, we will find out.
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