2023-07-18 07:40:47
BarcelonaHistorically, Barça has always defined itself as a buying club when it comes to the signing market. In other words, of those who have enough financial muscle to invest and who have not always needed to transfer footballers to square the budget. Even in those times when the economy has allowed him less room for action, the Blaugrana club has ended up finding imaginative formulas to incorporate top-level footballers. Joan Laporta, in fact, has become an expert at juggling to be able to sign in two stages marked by heavy debt and in which the club’s expenses had skyrocketed. The poisoned legacies of the directives that preceded him conditioned his range of action. But to what extent?
In his first term, between 2003 and 2010, Laporta took over a Barça that had just generated a deficit of 71.3 million in the last year with a Joan Gaspart that had increased the net debt to 321 million euros. The reason? Mainly, the increase in expenses: from 109 million in the last year with Josep Lluís Núñez (1999-00), it went to 195 million in the last year with Gaspart (2002-03). An increase of 79.5% in three years that was not accompanied by a similar rise in income: the growth was 3.9%, up to 123 million.
In those seven years of Laporta’s first term, Barça brought in around forty players at a rate of 457 million. Especially in the first two years, the bulk of the money went to youngsters hungry for titles who, together with the base of talents starting to arrive from the youth ranks, became the basis of the team: from Ronaldinho to Márquez, passing through Eto’o and Deco. Players with careers who were between the ages of 23 and 26. At the same time, the club brought in veterans low cost as a wardrobe background. It wasn’t until 2007 that Barça started to invest more than 10 million in transfers in players who were almost in their thirties: from Zambrotta to Henry, via Ibrahimovic or Villa. The average age of signings in Laporta’s first term, 26.7 years. The average cost per player, just over 12 million. Of course: only six pounds and two ceded.
11 of the 21 signings since 2021 were free agents
When he returned to the club, in 2021, Laporta once again found himself with a Barça burdened by the debt he was carrying from the previous term, of Josep Maria Bartomeu: 820 million which rose above 1,300 if the loan ended up being signed to finance Espai Barça. The impact of the pandemic, which caused a hole of 582 million between 2019 and 2021, highlighted that the wage bill of the club was little more than unaffordable. The season before the health crisis, 2018-19, Barça paid 636 million in wages, the highest figure in history for a sports club. It was more than double the 310 million in the last year of Laporta’s first term (2009-19). A figure that was only held up to increase income, but that strained the financial situation of the club, which is now in a hurry to cut, sections included. The move to Montjuïc, another stone in the backpack, as it will involve reducing income in the 2023-24 academic year.
All of this has an impact on the strict control of the fair play financial plan that the League launched in 2013. Apart from the sharp salary cut, Barça has been forced to seek extraordinary income through the partial sale of some assets: the activation of levers such as the transfer during 25 years of 25% of the television rights to the Sixth Street fund or 49.9% of Barça Studios to Socios, two operations that have brought him 767 million with which he has cleaned up part of the club’s balance sheet. This, however, is not enough. This explains the signing policy of the last two years.
Despite the recent announcement by the League that this season will allow clubs with surpluses, with a negative salary margin, to reinvest 50% of the savings in wages in new footballers, Barça has searched the market for free players with moderate salaries. More than half of the 21 signings made since 2021, 11, have come this way. Another three, in addition, have done so as ceded. In other words, he has only paid for seven players so far. These, of course, have not been cheap at all: 285 million euros, as long as the 60 million that could end up costing Vitor Roque are paid, the exception that breaks the norm in a summer without levers. He is one of the five players for whom more than 45 million will be paid, an amount that between 2003 and 2010 was surpassed only by Ibrahimovic. This cost raises the average expenditure per player to 13.6 million, a figure higher than that of Laporta’s first stage at the club (12). The average age is slightly lower, 26.6 years to 26.7 (Emerson, Demir, Ferran, Pablo Torre and Vitor Roque lower the average considerably), but, on the other hand, the number of professional matches played by the players before reaching the club is higher: from the 333 of this stage to the 239 of the previous one. The new paradigm is clear: proven and experienced players who arrive on the free agent poster and who guarantee immediate performance. From Christensen to Iñigo Martínez, through Kessié or Gündogan. They are, of course, temporary reinforcements: Aguero, Alves, Bellerín, Memphis and Aubameyang are no longer at the club. Market opportunities, which in some cases are looking for a change of scenery and to sign one last big contract, and which must help grow a generation of young people who want to take advantage of the departures of Piqué, Alba and Busquets to become the foundation of the club during this decade.
#Laportas #juggling #act #sign #Barça #poisoned #heritage