Barcelona could face exclusion from the Champions League next season Photo: Albert Gea/Reuters
Barcelona's story of financial decline has been one of them. has been played out in stages, from the huge transfer spending of the last decade to the latest summer splurge on Oriol Romeu, and now the reckoning is finally coming.
In July, the Telegraph reported that UEFA had declared profits made from the sale of future income streams inadmissible under financial fair play – a new twist on an old form of income generation that sells the future to support the present. The line was finally crossed when Barcelona presented their FFP calculation for the 2021-2022 season.
UEFA didn't just reject the calculation – they fined Barcelona for submitting it. The club's appeal against the €500,000 sanction was rejected in November. The club accepted the FFP only because the total recovery was based on four years of cumulative losses, but the episode suggested problems in the future.
Now comes the first suggestion that Barcelona have indeed failed to meet UEFA's FFP requirements for 2022. -2023, this is a message from the German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag, to which they have not yet responded. A rather bitter dessert to serve up the triumph of the European Super League, which followed the decision of the European courts this week.
How much of Barcelona's revenue was simply wiped out only time will tell, but judging by the amounts received from future sales for the year in question, the amount could be as high as €608 million. The club has already recognized operating losses without inadmissible FFP income of approximately €200 million.
If Barcelona fails the UEFA FFP, the fragile club will be dealt a serious blow. Exclusion from the Champions League next season and possibly beyond will deprive them of a vital source of income. The club is already drowning in debt: operating losses have accumulated around 1.35 billion euros in recent years. Another 1.5 billion euros are allocated for the project of the new Espai Barca stadium. The old Camp Nou has already been demolished, dismantled and taken away.
The club is clinging to its dream of the Super League and the power to fight UEFA, although it seems that this is the most distant prospect. Barcelona have sold 25 percent of their future La Liga television revenue over the next 25 years to US investor Sixth Street. The company has booked a profit on the sale of media subsidiary Barca Studios, although serious doubts remain about how much the market will pay. The club has cut costs so much that last summer it actually stopped paying transfer fees to players.
It bears repeating that this is a club that, together with Real Madrid, aims to take European football to a new level of competition. A new dawn that includes a new format, biased in favor of existing powers and – remarkably, it is said – a firmer hand on financial regulation. Barcelona, along with Real Madrid and their various consultants on the Super League project, want to tell everyone else what good financial management looks like and how it can best be applied.
Where Super League goes next remains to be seen, although the mass withdrawal of six Premier League clubs signed in 2021 suggests it is not a clear path to victory. His legal case is being handled by A22 Sports, a consultancy set up for this purpose by two American financiers close to Real Madrid president Florentino Perez. Despite all the obvious shortcomings, the Super League still has contractual obligations with its 12 original members, which include a fine of 300 million euros for withdrawal.
In an interview this week with Spanish radio station COPE, A22 chief executive Bernd Reichart made no guarantees that the fines would never be enforced. This is the dynamic at the heart of Real Madrid and Barcelona's game, and one card they are unwilling to give up. This is disgraceful for the other 10 clubs who are responsible. They have already paid 2 million euros as an initial entry fee, and some clubs have already written off this amount as losses.
Under the new Super League format, clubs finishing in the top four for the first time (such as potentially Aston Villa or Girona) will not enter the elite division. Instead, they will be relegated to the third division and will need two more promotions before they are allowed to play the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona. In the same interview, Reichart said that this would be good – it would give them time to adapt. You can imagine how this proposal was accepted.
The campaign that accompanied the ECJ ruling from ESL and A22 was based on the idea of ”freedom” – that football was, in their view, free from the tyranny of UEFA's competition monopoly. Indeed, UEFA is far from perfect and has generally accepted that it is acting at the behest of the biggest clubs. Power lies in the hands of those who most astutely played out the breakaway in April 2021, and that turned out to be Nasser Al-Khelaifi, chairman of the board of Paris Saint-Germain.
However, freedom cannot also mean freedom for Barcelona in particular. from the potential FFP disaster that is approaching. He's been in huge debt for years, and now all these chickens are coming home to roost. Major figures associated with the club, such as former Champions League-winning defender Gerard Pique, have suggested a move to a private company is the only solution, although no one has said how that might work. Even Perez promised a “corporate restructuring” of Real Madrid.
UEFA's FFP sanctions will now have far-reaching consequences for Barcelona, on top of the club's many other problems. A sad death, but one they made themselves. They tried to blow up UEFA and its competitions, but failed. Now it seems that UEFA is attacking Barcelona. The consequence of just another miscalculation on the part of the club.
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