Barcelona’s Financial Struggles: What Happened, And How Will The Club Rebuild? | OneFootball

FC Barcelona is one of football’s most iconic clubs. From their instantly recognisable badge, the legendary Camp Nou, and the millions of images of football’s greatest ever player donning the famous Blaugrana colours for all of seventeen years, their brand is global.

Everywhere you look, from the streets of Catalonia to the Friday markets of Baghdad to the favelas of Rio, football fans can be seen in Barcelona’s red-and-blue. One would be led to think, then, that with this massive brand, a club as massive as Barcelona would have no trouble financially, signing whoever they pleased, and would see bankruptcy as well beneath a club like them.

The Blaugrana frequently trade places with Real Madrid season after season as the highest-earning clubs in world football, making roughly £1 billion a year. However, despite these figures, as the football world has come to know since the turn of the decade, financial issues are rife in the Catalan capital. After the Covid-19 pandemic and an earth-shattering 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich, Barcelona’s financial issues have been laid bare for the world to see.

How did it get this way? How have the club managed during their financial troubles, and somehow made a team capable of competing in Europe? What’s in store for the future at Barcelona? Let’s take a deep dive.

HOW DID BARCA GET HERE?

The reason why Barcelona got into this financial crisis boils down to a few main points.

First, and most famously, under former president Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barcelona spent over a billion euros on transfers in a span of just four years. This included lacklustre transfers that went well into nine-digit sums for Ousmane Dembele, Philippe Coutinho, and Antoine Griezmann. Barcelona also frequently spent well over £30 million for short-term and disappointing signings, like Malcom, André Gomes, and Arda Turan.

Barcelona also neglected young talent for years. With the signing of older, instant impact players under Bartomeu, Barcelona ended up with an incredibly old team. In their famous 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich, Barcelona fielded their oldest ever starting eleven in the Champions League, with an average age of 29.9 years. It was a team that had six players over 30 years of age and just two players under 26.

Another aspect of the financial turmoil was the crippling wages Bartomeu gave his players. For years, Barcelona had the world’s highest wage bill, paying Lionel Messi alone £555 million over four years, including bonuses. Barcelona also gave players like Antoine Griezmann, Samu Umtiti, Luis Suarez, and Gerard Piqué over £30 million a season, with 13 players making over £10 million a season, adjusted for inflation. From 2014 to 2019, Barcelona doubled its wage bill from £200 million a year to just under half a billion a season, going to the players. And that was before bonuses were accounted for.

When the COVID-19 lockdown went into effect in March 2020, Barcelona’s finances, which were already strained, completely collapsed without the income coming from matchday revenue and shirt sales. If a healthy club’s finances are a well-constructed tower of cards, Barcelona’s was like a partially collapsed but somehow still standing tower of cards that had all its weight leaning on one or two cards. COVID removed those load-bearing cards, and everything came crashing down.

That’s how Barcelona got into financial turmoil, but how on Earth would they get out of it?

A Way Out

Bartomeu would resign in October 2020, and Joan Laporta would come in. In a sea of tiresome bids that prioritised financial stability, promising no success for Barcelona on the pitch, Laporta’s bid stood out. He took the club from similarly grim circumstances in 2003 to the most successful team in history. Who else would be better than him? He also promised the expansion of the Barca brand and, somehow, the renovation of the Camp Nou into the biggest ground in Europe.

Laporta quickly changed the club’s entire identity. A wage bill of over £400 million was slashed in half by 2022, with the cheapest wage bill coming in 2023/24 at just £204 million a season, with just seven players making £10 million or more, and just one, Robert Lewandowski, making over £20 million.

The entire transfer system was overhauled. First, under sporting director Mateu Alemany, Barcelona had its best summer transfer window in years. Smart spending was prioritised, with Andreas Christensen and Franck Kessie coming in on frees, Raphinha at £58 million being Barcelona’s most expensive transfer of the post-Bartomeu era, Jules Kounde coming in at £50 million, and Robert Lewandowski signed for just £45 million.

The Lewandowski signing, especially, is the perfect contrast to the previous board’s reckless spending. The Polish striker, at less than an eighth of Bartomeu’s spending on Dembélé, Coutinho, and Griezmann, has scored 14 more times for Barcelona than the three combined.

Since then, Barcelona’s spending has been very selective and contained. In the past three seasons, Barcelona has spent over £10 million on just three players – Vitor Roque, Dani Olmo, and Joan Garcia. While Roque was a mistake from the board, Olmo and Garcia have been vital members of the first team.

Barcelona has also prioritised bargain deals, chief among which is the signing of Íñigo Martínez for absolutely nothing in 2023, and the Spaniard would have a historic season at centerback in 2024/25. Barca also signed Eric Garcia for nothing from Manchester City in 2021, and across a half-decade at the club has evolved into an incredibly versatile mainstay in the team, putting in shifts across the entire back line and at defensive midfield. We’ve also seen the Spanish Champions sign wonderkid Roony Bardghji for just £3 million, and a so far successful loan for Marcus Rashford, which could see the Catalans sign the Englishman permanently for just £30 million, a pittance for a productive winger in today’s market.

The final way Barcelona has built a great squad again is through the revival of La Masia. Managers Xavi Hernandez and Hansi Flick have prioritized the talent factory in order to fill lots of gaps that would’ve otherwise needed big money signings. Over the past few years, talents such as Pau Cubarsi, Alejandro Balde, Gavi, and, of course, Lamine Yamal have been promoted from the academy. Without the world’s arguably best youth facilities, Barcelona would have needed to spend hundreds of millions to get players of similar quality.

Another way Laporta has been able to finance the rebuilding of Barcelona into a competent team is by way of financial levers. The president has been able to get more short-term money for Barcelona by selling partial stakes of their assets to third parties. The club made over £800 million with these assets, and with the extra money, was able to pay off debts, sign players like Lewandowski, Raphinha, and Kounde, and was able to comply with La Liga’s salary cap.

Now, nearly six years after Barcelona’s financial troubles were first laid bare for the world to see, the club is in a much better situation. They have a great young squad, are on course to win a second straight La Liga title, and are on course for financial stability with a wage bill of less than half of what it was at its highest point.

That being said, Barcelona’s financial troubles aren’t over. Laporta has finally healthily run the club again, but their finances are still thinner than most big clubs. However, most Barcelona fans miss the point. Laporta has changed the entire way that the Catalans have been run, such as to not get back to financial freedom immediately, but to be able to thrive and build despite hardships. If Laporta’s main objective was to get back to financial freedom, the Camp Nou renovations would’ve never happened. But they did, are still ongoing, and will hopefully be done within a year or two. It’s a minor miracle that the club has been able to make such massive renovations, but they’ve done it.

So how does the club plan to build in the future?

Well, assuming Joan Laporta is re-elected in Barcelona’s presidential elections in mid-March, the president seems committed to keeping Barca on the trajectory he put them in. One of the main goals still to achieve for the 63-year-old is to bring the club back to the 1:1 rule, meaning that Barcelona will be able to re-invest £1 in wages for every £1 they make.

Under Laporta’s five-year tenure so far, Barcelona have become a competing club again on Europe’s biggest stage, and are a favourite to win the Champions League. Laporta has also hired Barcelona’s best manager since the Luis Enrique and Pep Guardiola eras in Hansi Flick, and has his star for the future, Lamine Yamal, who placed second in Ballon d’Or voting as a 17-year-old.

Of course, it’s going to be bumpy, but the Catalans are finally in a good place again. Now, it’s just up to the club’s current faces to keep their great momentum going, and to bring back the real prime Barca.