Barcelona will play its first game of the year this Thursday in Las Palmas against the team led by García Pimienta, an old acquaintance in the Barcelona team. The coach, who has brought UD Las Palmas back to the First Division after taking the team in January 2022, will face Barcelona for the first time after having spent his entire career at La Masia. His way of seeing football is the same as that defended by Xavi Hernández. It will be the first game of 2024 with many objectives to achieve.
After an abrupt start to the season, Xavi’s Barça seeks to improve its offensive production in 2024 and recover its great defensive version in the four competitions to which it aspires. Seven points behind Real Madrid and Girona in the League, the Blaugrana squad will have the chance to mark a new turning point in the Spanish Super Cup in Saudi Arabia with a much more forceful Xavi Hernández in his speech, demanding of his squad and embraced by the board chaired by Joan Laporta. Winning titles by playing well and reaching at least the quarterfinals of the Champions League to meet its part in the budget is once again the great objective of the season.
The economic situation of the club, marked in the last two years by the sale of assets – popularly known as ‘levers’ – to obtain green numbers, obtained the approval of the compromising member at the assembly on October 21. Also the future with a budget for this academic year 23-24. Now without leverage, Barcelona aspires to earn 859 million, compared to the 1,259 million it billed last season. However, the entity is encountering some obstacles. The club, without salary margin, has not received the 40 million that the investment fund Libero Football Finance AG had to pay, corresponding to the purchase of 10% of Barça Vision, the company in charge of the creation, production and marketing of the entire offer club audiovisual.
The deadline was December 31, 2023, so the club has launched the corresponding legal actions to claim the amount while beginning to activate alternatives to find another buyer. President Joan Laporta has traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks in search of new economic agreements. Previously, after achieving the agreement of the 2021 members’ assembly to raise the salary limit, the club already sold 49% of Barça Vision to Orpheus Media and Socios.com, in exchange for 200 million euros that also did not arrive.
The contracts between FC Barcelona and the Turkish construction company Limak say that the first and second tiers of the future Spotify Camp Nou must be ready in November 2024, coinciding with the 125th anniversary of FC Barcelona, ??to open the stadium with 50 percent of the capacity. “And they will be,” say sources from the Blaugrana entity who were very happy when in October the Government Commission of Barcelona City Council approved the granting of the main license so that the works could enter a new phase and go from demolition to construction. construction.
Permission has been requested. The entity expected to receive it at the end of July. However, in November the Turkish company completed the demolition of the third stand, an essential step to begin the major renovation of the stadium, a month in advance. It is a great advance, since the workers went to work at the facility on June 1. That is, in four months, on September 30, they have been able to cut a month off the planned schedule by completing the demolition. Something that is applauded by those in charge of both parties since Spotify Camp Nou is a project in which time and low costs have become priorities. Convincing the member that it is worth investing in a card or season ticket to see the team is another of the club’s pending issues. Once the deadline to update the member census has expired, the entity has 110,531 registered members of the 141,309 called to update their data. 30,770 have been left behind.
“I follow Barça, I always did and I will continue to do so. It is the club that I love and will love all my life.” Word from Leo Messi who, 14 years after winning his first Ballon d’Or, raised his eighth in November in Paris thanks to the World Cup he won with Argentina. He was listened to attentively by president Joan Laporta, who came to Paris to accompany Aitana Bonmatí, who won her first Ballon d’Or. However, there was no greeting or exchange of words between the star and Laporta. Nor at the Imperial Hotel, where they stayed before the gala. “They will find the time to talk about everything. The gala was not the place,” club sources pointed out.
After winning the World Cup, Messi no longer has any outstanding accounts. At least, on a sporting level. But he does have others. The nostalgic ones. He would like to return to Barcelona to say goodbye to his club and its fans. “It is my home. I don’t see myself as a coach, but who knows if he is in another role,” he revealed. He has a thorn in his mind: “I think there was a strange feeling when I left. I deserve to be able to say goodbye to those people. If that tribute is given, I will be delighted to be there.”
The board plans to speak with the player’s father and representative, Jorge Messi, to finalize dates for 2024, when the new stadium can open with 60% of its capacity. Laporta’s board does not consider that the tribute will be in 2026, when, if as planned, the new Camp Nou can open with 100% of its capacity. It remains to be seen if the predisposition of Messi, who ended up displeased with Laporta, is the same.
