Not everyone likes it, but there is a logic to this behavior.
Attract attention
Barcelona in its modern realities attracts a lot of attention. And for various reasons. Someone is interested in its sports component, someone is interested in finance, someone in marketing and someone is even ethical. Big contracts, huge debts, extravagant ways to solve problems: modern Barcelona is no longer a trophy machine with a stable game, but a great generator of arguments.
Frank Kessy, Andreas Christensen, Robert Lewandowski, Rafinha, Jules Kunde joined Barcelona for nearly £ 200 million, while the club’s debt exceeds £ 1 billion. To relieve short-term financial pressure and afford to register new ones contracts, “Barcelona” has taken a fundamental step. He sold some of the future television rights and his media division to Barca Studios.
However, the actions of Barcelona president Joan Laporta are controversial. The Catalans are in a deep hole and are trying to get out of it. Are they doing everything right? Hardly. Are they doing what they have to do? Probably yes.
“All or nothing” for Laporta
Here we not only discuss from our bell tower, but also rely on the opinion of the famous columnist Guillem Balague, who specializes in La Liga. In his opinion, Laporta is repeating the pattern that brought the club a huge success during his first reign. This scheme can be conditionally called the “all or nothing” option. Then, by the way, he also blamed the former management for the deplorable status of the club, which he inherited.
Now, apart from the financial chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Laporta has found in his immediate predecessor, Josep Maria Bartomeu, the perfect villain. Although it is worth noting that it was Bartomeu who once separated some of Barcelona’s divisions, which are now on sale for nearly £ 760m, in order to ensure the club could sign newcomers.
Obviously, under the former president, catastrophic decisions were made in the sports sector. This includes costly contract renewals for a number of players which plunged Barcelona into financial instability for years to come. But not everything was just bad. In Barcelona, in fact, there was a continuous internal struggle for power between two fundamentally different parties. One is represented by Bartomeu and Sandro Rosell – this is a kind of Catalan establishment, and the other – by Laporta. This state of affairs often forces the club president to resort to short-term measures to please the fans and mass mediabut it makes it difficult to look far at the big picture.
Barcelona could afford to borrow and sell the club’s divisions to sign players. But the problem was the registration, their salaries, because the rules of financial fair play in La Liga were overwhelming. Now the club has managed to stabilize the situation, get rid of the imbalance.
Laporta has decided to spend most of the money now available to build a strong team, believing in success on the field it will bring money and partners to help cover salary costs and future transfers. Which will ultimately lead Barcelona to success. The club found success on the pitch to be 30-40 percent of the brand value. It is also believed that the Barcelona brand is so strong that they can live without losing recognition even for a year or two without great success in the game, as long as the star players continue to play for the team.
Fears for the future
However, not everyone sees the plan as Laporta wants to present it. In 2003, when Laporta first appeared at the club, Barcelona’s income was € 170m, an average compared to other European clubs. There was enormous potential for improvement from competent managerial decisions.
But now Barcelona are somewhere near the top of the food chain in terms of earnings. The brand is highly developed. If you start winning big trophies again, it won’t lead to much growth in the short term. Because the club has already maximized almost every traditional way of making money: from TV rights, from merchandising, from tickets.
Perhaps the only real way to ensure growth in every perspective is through the club’s digital media and activities. But Laporta has just sold almost half of this Barcelona business now. A president can push a club that has reached its maximum potential into a situation where it has to sell parts of its empire over and over again. And this is a risk.
To what extent can Barcelona successfully reduce this risk on the pitch? Lewandowski is not Ronaldinho, he will not become an icon. Someone compares Pedri to Iniesta, but there are no new Xavi, Busquet, Puyol and so on. The team has a good quality and will win most of the games, but something more is needed for consistent victories in the decisive games. And without that, Laporta’s bet will only lead to more defeats for Barcelona in the distant future. The President did not follow the path of cost and risk reduction, relying only on young people and low cost players. He chose a different path.
What if there hasn’t been success on the pitch yet? Investment bank Goldman Sachs provides Barcelona with a total of € 2 billion in various loans. And if necessary he can take over the direction of the club. If all fails, the club will be in “foreign” private hands. And we can already say that Barcelona does not really belong to itself.
Negativity around Barcelona
Balague, in his reasoning, notes that in England there is above all a lot of negativity in discussions about Barcelona. Here you can find several reasons. For a long time the Catalans have positioned themselves as an unusual club that is above the rest, even in its principles. And then they started to behave not very well, like this summer, for example, with Frankie de Jong or Martin Braithwaite. Reactivity unavoidable. The club is trying, in fact, to squeeze the players, making them guilty of their own mistakes.
Furthermore, we are talking about a big club that is trying to survive in a post-pandemic world where the structure of the football economy has changed a lot. Many competitors around the world are supported and funded by entire states and clubs in England have created a powerful common financial infrastructure.
The best Spanish clubs here seem to be in an “every man for himself” position. And they are forced to seek their own solutions, while maintaining their top position. Barcelona have been jealous for many years, so now this feeling can turn into gloom. And someone is upset that the old romantic version of Barcelona is irretrievably lost and is turning into another top European club.
