Barça women’s volleyball gives up its place in the First Division because playing in the Canary Islands is too expensive

2023-05-20 18:51:26

BarcelonaBarça’s poor economic situation is also fully affecting the club’s amateur sections. First was ice hockey, which had to play away from home for all the games of the season that has just ended. The reason was that Joan Laporta’s board of directors did not fulfill the promise to install a temporary ice rink on the Camp Nou esplanade after the Barcelona team was left without a place to play after it was decided that a the historic ice rink will house the entity’s museum while the Espai Barça works are being carried out. And now the Catalan entity has given up the place it has earned in sports in the highest category of women’s volleyball, the Iberdrola League.

“We won the League and the promotion phase without losing a game, but we have been told that there are no financial resources to go up despite the fact that the managers of the section have done everything possible to achieve it,” he explains to the ARA one of the players of the team, Sara Esteban. When they finished the regular phase of group B of Superliga 2 full of victories, the members of Barça CVB already sensed that promotion would not be possible because of the dismissals, but anyway the club decided to contest the phase of ascent to Tenerife. There, the team coached by Adrián Óscar Fiorenza, who in January had already lifted the Copa Princesa title, won the four games played without conceding a single set and thus managed to return to the Iberdrola League a season after relegation .

But the joy of the milestone would not last long. “Barça CVB will continue to participate next season in the Superliga 2 after evaluating its options to assume a place in the top division”, the Barça club merely informed on May 10 on its website, the same message they gave to this newspaper when official Barcelona sources were asked about the reasons for the resignation. “In this way, Barça CVB ensures to compete in the best possible conditions for the 2023-2024 campaign,” continued the statement.

Longer commutes

The three main reasons that increase the budget of a team in the Iberdrola League compared to the Superliga 2 are the longer journeys, the increase in wages (the players can no longer combine it with other jobs due to a matter of time ) and the need to sign foreign players to improve the level of the squads. While in Group B of the second category most of Barça CVB’s rivals are Catalan, Valencian and Balearic, in the First Division there is only one Catalan, CV Sant Cugat, and one Balearic, Avarca Menorca. On the other hand, this year there have been up to four teams from the Canary Islands, a fact which means that the cost of travel will skyrocket.

Another amount that is increased in the Iberdrola League compared to the Superliga 2 is that of registration, despite the fact that the difference is practically insignificant for a gigantic club like Barça. This year, both the men’s and women’s Division of Honor, this concept has had a cost of 11,750 euros plus a guarantee and bond of 3,000 (which covers both men and women). On the other hand, in Superliga 2, registration costs 4,600 euros and a guarantee and bond of 2,000.

The male competes in the Honor Division

The situation of Barça’s women’s volleyball stands in contrast to that of the men’s, which this season competed in Spain’s top division, the Superliga, and finished seventh in the regular season. ARA asked the Barcelona club about the difference in criteria between the women’s and men’s teams and the answer was that “the women’s team is linked to the Barcelona Volleyball Club and this makes the situation different from that of the men’s team”. But Club Voleibol Barcelona, ​​founded in 1994, is currently made up entirely of the first team and the lower categories of the women’s Barça and wears the same official Barça kit as the men’s team.