2023-12-23 11:51:12
As FC Barcelona prepares to return to the round of 16 of the Champions League for the first time in three years by facing Naples in February 2024, the Spanish giant could well be excluded for future seasons. Indeed, the German newspaper Die Welt reports that Barca could be sanctioned for violating UEFA financial regulations.
In September, Joan Laporta, president of the Catalan club, highlighted a net profit of 304 million euros when presenting his financial results. A figure supposed to be sufficient to allow the Blaugrana to enter into the cornerstones of financial fair play and therefore to avoid a sanction on a European scale.
Problem: the financial statement presented by the manager includes income from branches outside football, which is not authorized by UEFA. Barça being a multi-sport club, Joan Laporta would have integrated income from other sports sections (hands, basketball, etc.) but also those linked to future sales of TV rights and marketing.
For UEFA, Barça’s accounts would be “a disaster”
The German daily reveals that the difference between the balance sheet presented and the reality of the accounts would be around a hundred million euros and that UEFA would consider them “a disaster”. Faced with these irregularities, the governing body of European football is reportedly considering suspending Xavi’s club from the various European Cups for “two to three years”. A threat taken very seriously by the reigning Spanish champion, who had already been fined 500,000 euros by UEFA in the summer of 2023 for having incorrectly declared profits “which did not constitute relevant income”.
Bad news for the Catalan team, in financial difficulty since the end of the governance of Josep Maria Bartomeu, president between 2014 and 2020. The latter ended up resigning, leaving a slate of more than a billion euros to his successor . In addition, FC Barcelona is currently engaged in a large renovation project at the Camp Nou for which the club has taken out a loan of 1.45 billion euros.
As a reminder, Barça strongly supports the relaunch of the Super League project alongside Real Madrid. The club has been pushing, since the announcement of the European court decision this Thursday, in favor of this project which would allow it to accumulate very large revenues.
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