FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta is living day to day and, for the moment, he still has hours to go before closing the financial year for the 2023-2024 season, initially scheduled for Sunday 30th. The board of directors was still unable to complete any of the agreements planned in its meeting on Thursday to obtain LaLiga’s authorisation to normally apply the common 1:1 rule – investing in signings the same as in transfers – and improve the squad that Hansi Flick will manage. The challenge is to get 100 million euros during the month of July as allowed by the employers’ association led by Javier Tebas.
The priority is for the accounts for this season to come out positive after the wage bill has gone from 676 million in 2021, the year in which Laporta returned to the presidency of Barça, to 415 million. The planned budget includes income of 859 million and profits of 11. Despite the losses generated by the move to Montjuïc, which are around 50 million, the board maintains that it will meet the numbers and clean up the economy to go to the market normally with transfers – Marc Guiu’s to Chelsea for six million is taken for granted – and new sponsorships such as that of Nike.
The issue is, in any case, so delicate that the Barça club registers more than signs players, since the updating of contracts such as that of Iñigo Martínez is still pending. The knot continues to be the pending account with Barça Vision, the company that deals with the audiovisual offer and whose 49% was initially sold in exchange for 200 million, an amount that, since it was not paid in full, forced Barça to look for new partners in a Cypriot company and in Líbero. The club is pending to deposit 40 million in a first tranche – to close the 2023-2024 financial year – and 60 million later to comply with LaLiga fair play.
The president’s actions have provoked criticism from Víctor Font, a candidate in the 2021 elections, who, after ruling out an immediate motion of censure, stated: “Laporta is more of a problem than a solution.”
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