Madrid and the LaLiga headquarters have become the meeting and reconciliation point between Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, and Joan Laporta, his counterpart at FC Barcelona. Both leaders are very different. They flaunt their differences in public and in private and command the stage like no one else. But they also know that they are needed. That LaLiga needs a competitive Barça and vice versa. And, for this reason, the club and the employers work in the shadows to bury the discrepancies that the non-Barcelona fan brought to the agreement with CVC or the strong negative impact that the Negreira case had. Publicly, everything always ends with a handshake and even with the delivery of an award.
The last sample of his approach occurred yesterday in Madrid, in the presentation of LaLiga 2023-2024. Laporta, who attended the gala accompanied by the football director, Mateu Alemany, went up on stage to collect from Javier Tebas the meritorious institutional recognition in the form of a trophy that corresponds to FC Barcelona as 2022-2023 League champion . A significant gesture that both have buried the hatchet.
The first step towards reconciliation was taken at the extraordinary club assembly held in April. President Laporta came to explain the Negreira Case to all the club presidents. It worked. And the Barcelona president continued working so that Tebas gave the placet to the Barcelona feasibility plan, disassociating himself from the CVC demand. Barça notified the court at the beginning of June of its willingness to “desist” from the procedure in which, together with Athletic and Madrid, it requested that the agreement between LaLiga and CVC be declared illegal.
LaLiga, weeks later, listened to the request of the soccer director Mateu Alemany and slightly and temporarily modified one of the articles of economic control as a result of the financial difficulties that most Spanish teams are going through. With the green light from the clubs of the Delegate Commission, the employers exceptionally approved and only in this summer transfer window that the teams can spend a maximum of 50% of the cost that they previously reduce, instead of the 40% previously stipulated. This percentage will increase to 60% if the player with whom the savings is generated represents more than 5 percent of the total cost of the sports squad.
Despite the change in guideline, Barcelona must continue to lighten its wage bill. He has committed to LaLiga to place the salary mass at 532 million euros for the next season with sales and salary reductions that also affect the Barcelona executive, alerted that she now has to be an example.
To favor the difficult undertaking, LaLiga also allows compensation for deferred wages to footballers who are no longer in the squad to stop being counted under this concept. According to the accounts of the Laporta board of directors, of the 389 million in deferred salaries that he encountered after winning the elections on March 7, 2021, 70 million euros remain to be paid.
LaLiga also has the Barcelona commitment to fulfill its viability plan with the professional sections. Before June 30, the entity had to comply with the cuts presented in basketball, handball, futsal and roller hockey. Of the 108 million euros budgeted in the sections, the entity had to go to 98 million but it stayed at 104. To continue with its plan, the board of directors had to present a guarantee of 6.670 million euros jointly. The endorsement and the speech of mutual understanding that Laporta and Tebas share have been one more guarantee that the rapprochement is a reality.
