FC Barcelona will be able to register Marcos Alonso, Sergi Roberto, Iñaki Peña, Gavi and Araújo. This was confirmed by the economic vice president Eduard Romeu in a meeting with the press to discuss the financial situation of the entity that is still in the process of recovery. On the other hand, he did not specify if there will be room to be able to register his new additions such as that of the former Athletic centre-back, Iñigo Martínez or that of the Manchester City captain, Ilkay Gündogan, who have already reached an agreement with the club but have not yet been officially announced.
In this sense, the entity is working to reduce wage costs to 528 million euros for next season. 51 of these 528 million correspond to the salaries of players on loan that Xavi does not have and who have a current contract. They are Lenglet, Umtiti and Dest from the first team and Àlex Collado and Gustavo Maia from the subsidiary. Another 90 million of the 528 correspond to salaries of the professional sections. “When we arrived, the salary mass was 708 million, which included the salaries of the men’s and women’s first teams, youth football and the professional sections of the club,” said Romeu.
Despite the efforts made, Romeu acknowledged that the club’s structural debt remains around 1,350 million euros.
Within the entity’s structural debt, the vice president specified that of the 389 million in deferred salaries that the current board encountered after winning the elections on March 7, 2021, 70 million remain to be paid. “There was a collective bargaining table with the players, another with four other footballers on the sidelines. 47 million euros in increasing wages were signed. And we must also remember that at that time there were many ‘cheat bonuses’ because before the contracts were made with clauses or cheat bonuses that were very easy to comply with, such as charging for a certain number of games, for qualifying for Europe or simply for complying the links ”, slipped the vice president.
On the margin travels the debt of the Espai Barça, which amounts to 1,450 million that will be paid with the income generated by the opening of the new facilities. “You cannot add the money from the Espai Barça to the structural debt because that money is returned with the income that the Espai Barça itself will generate. It is simplistic,” said Romeu, responding to former candidate Víctor Font who, a week ago, pointed out that “the current inheritance it is worse than Bartomeu’s”. “It seems that it was good for some candidate that we finished ninth in the classification and also outside of Europe. But all you have to do is look at the attendances we’ve had this season at the stadium. We have returned to excite the people”, said Romeu.
The board is confident that this season will close with benefits thanks to the sale of assets popularly known as ‘levers’ that were activated last July 2022 and that the next financial year corresponding to the 2023-24 academic year “will be closed with black numbers”, that is, without earning or losing money between what is entered and what is spent. To achieve this, Romeu specified that, for the moment, the club has no plans to sell more assets or devalue soccer players.
It should be remembered that LaLiga, chaired by Javier Tebas, put the brakes on the activation of the levers as a way to clean up the club’s exceeded economic fair play and has urged Barcelona to continue lowering its salary mass by selling footballers to be able to sign with the 1/1 regulations. 1 and not with the current 40 percent rule. In this sense, Barcelona does not plan to activate the sale of 49 percent of Barça Licensing
At the same time, the board of directors must approve a six million guarantee at the meeting on June 28 for a failure to cut spending, according to LaLiga, of the economic planning plan for the 22-23 season. Before June 30, the entity had to comply with the cuts presented at the time to LaLiga both in men’s, women’s and youth football as well as in the professional sections. Of the 108 million euros budgeted, the entity had to go to 98 million but the club stayed at 104 million because of the departure of the sections. Within the club they calculate that with the departure of Nikola Mirotic, who was earning around 10 million gross per year, and a salary reduction from the contract of coach Sarunas Jasikevicius, it will now be possible to guarantee that the managers recover their contribution.
The economic vice president also assured that the women’s soccer section that won the League, the Super Cup and the Champions League, “will not have cuts but we cannot go crazy either, we must be sustainable, but what we want is to maintain competitiveness,” he declared .
At the moment, the directive does not contemplate that UEFA will leave Barcelona out of the next edition of the Champions League because of the file opened by the Negreira case. “We do not contemplate not playing it. But, in the hypothetical case that something happened, we would have to be imaginative,” he replied.
Asked about Barça TV and its closure that will take place on June 30, Romeu stuck to the operating figures for the channel and its audience. “The closure of official television is part of the feasibility plan. It is a channel that has a cost of 14 million and that reported two million and is not sustainable,” he concluded.
