La Liga: Barcelona have exceeded the salary cap by 800,000,000

Actions taken by Barcelona management in recent months have relieved the organization of short-term pay pressures and allowed them to sign players without the salary cap issue that hampered them on several occasions last season.

The ceding of future earnings has saved the lot for now, which is also reflected in La Liga’s announcement of new salary caps, as they do twice a year after the end of each transfer window.

Barcelona can now have wages up to 656,429,000 euros, contrary to the previous announcement in March when they could have wages up to… -144,353,000, ie a negative limit.

The loan deals combined with the summer’s activated reinforcements and transfer activity have boosted the immediate financial margins of the Catalans, who have managed to attract and sign big-deal players like Robert Lewandowski, Rafinha and Gilles Kude.

Barcelona are second in Spanish football, Real Madrid are still first but from March’s 739,163,000 they can now have contracts worth… just 683,462,000. Third force in this list remains Atlético, who also struggled with their salary cap over the summer, eventually closing at 341,040,000, followed by Sevilla at 199,855,000, Villarreal at 151,206,000 and Real Sociedad at 143,199,000.

These limits affect the salaries of first-team players, the first coach, his assistant, coaches, as well as the salaries of partners, people from the academies and other areas of a club. They include fixed salaries and individual bonuses, insurance contributions, collective bonuses, transfer costs (including agency fees) and the annual depreciation of footballers in the club’s books. La Liga calculates them based on transfer earnings, commercial earnings or even future earnings from European competitions.

Clubs do not have to hit the limit, however several teams do and sometimes exceed it, leading to appropriate sanctions from the Spanish football authorities. The salary limits affect the country’s professional groups, i.e. those that make up the first two categories.