BARCELONA — There was applause in Barcelona‘s offices on Friday as a first payment of €28 million from the €100m sale of VIP boxes at Spotify Camp Nou arrived. Though the stadium is not yet operational, as it is being renovated ahead of a partial re-opening later this year, Barça had hoped the money raised would serve to register star signing Dani Olmo and young forward Pau Víctor with LaLiga for the second half of the season.
A source confirmed to ESPN that the deal should finally help Barça operate within LaLiga’s financial fair play regulations [FFP]. The problem is that the money arrived too late.
It is the latest chapter in an ongoing drama which has created the very real possibility of Olmo, a €60m signing from RB Leipzig last summer, and Víctor (a €3m arrival from Girona) not being able to play for Barça again this season. Right now, that is the case as things stand. LaLiga unregistered the duo on Wednesday after Barça missed a deadline of Dec. 31 to prove they were compliant with FFP, then the league and the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) released a statement on Jan. 4 to say they had rejected a follow-up request to re-register the duo.
That is why, as Barça president Joan Laporta and his closest advisors celebrated Friday’s cash injection, other sources with knowledge of the situation told ESPN there was “surprise” at the club’s optimism because the deadline has quite clearly passed.
Barça have been running the risk of failing to register some of their players due to financial problems for over three years now. Laporta inherited a club steeped in €1.2 billion of debt from his predecessor, Josep Maria Bartomeu, when he returned for a second spell in office in 2021. And, since then, following Lionel Messi‘s departure that summer because his new contract could not be registered, Barça have used different methods (or “levers”) to register signings while complying with the league’s regulations. There have been wage cuts, the sale of club assets, directors providing bank guarantees and court cases.
The club have always managed to pull something off at the 11th hour, but that may not be the case this time. Another court battle awaits.
Why Olmo and Víctor’s registrations have failed
Olmo and Víctor joined Barça last summer but, at the time of their signings, Barça were not in a position to register either player as they were in breach of their league-imposed annual spending limit.
All clubs in Spain are assigned a personal limit by LaLiga. It is roughly determined by the difference between a team’s revenue minus non-sporting outgoings and debt repayments. Barça’s for the current season stands at €426m. But they remained in excess of that amount on Dec. 31.
There are workarounds. Teams in breach of their limit are allowed to spend a certain percentage of any savings — through transfers, wage reductions, or new revenue streams — on new additions. There is also a rule which allows teams to temporarily use up to 80% of the salary due to an injured player on an alternative.
That was how Olmo (who missed Barça’s first two LaLiga fixtures of the campaign as he was not registered in time) and Victor were registered at the end of August. An injury to defender Andreas Christensen provided sufficient room within the club’s cap to register the pair, but only on a temporary basis until Dec. 31, 2024.
At the time, Laporta said in a news conference that he was unconcerned the registrations were only temporary, expressing confidence the club would be operating within LaLiga’s limit soon. A new €100m+ deal with kit supplier Nike — which was approved by members in December — was cited as a major reason for that optimism, but sources told ESPN the agreement with the American company did not raise enough to extend the registrations.
Despite that, club sources continued to tell ESPN there was optimism “everything will be OK.” Yet the situation dragged on and Barça seemingly exhausted all of their options last month. They lost two court hearings against the interpretation of LaLiga’s FFP rules. Barça argued on various fronts, focusing first on workers’ rights in the country and then on their right to register players using 80% of injured goalkeeper Marc-André ter Stegen‘s salary. Free agent Wojciech Szczęsny had already been signed as Ter Stegen’s replacement, though, and both judges ruled against Barça on all counts.
The club’s final option was the sale of VIP boxes at Camp Nou. Sources have told ESPN the deal is worth around €100m, but finalising the terms, getting the paperwork to LaLiga and providing proof of the money before the Dec. 31 deadline was difficult. As the deadline approached, the league released a statement saying Barça had not provided sufficient guarantees that they were able to fulfil the regulations. The next day, Olmo and Víctor were unregistered.
On Friday, Barça were still expressing confidence that they could reverse the situation. Coach Hansi Flick said that neither he nor the affected players were happy about the situation in a news conference ahead of Saturday’s Copa del Rey game against fourth-tier Barbastro. However, Flick added he trusted the club to fix it.
A few hours later, Barça received €28m of the payment relating to the VIP box deal. Sources told ESPN the club had sent the required paperwork to LaLiga and were now able to operate at what is known as the league’s 1:1 ratio rule, spending €1 on every €1 they save. The problem is they sent it three days too late for Olmo and Víctor, and as result the RFEF and LaLiga rejected their latest attempt.
Barça’s previous financial manoeuvres
A situation like this has been a long-time coming; you could even argue it’s already happened. Messi’s shock exit from the club in 2021, months after Laporta’s election, came because Barça could not afford to register his new contract with LaLiga. That same summer, the club posted statements confirming that wage cuts agreed with Gerard Piqué, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets had enabled them to register Memphis Depay and Eric García. (And later, Sergio Aguero.)
More salary reductions were required in January when Barça spent around €55m to sign Manchester City forward Ferran Torres. To register the Spain international, though, it was necessary for defender Samuel Umtiti to sign a new contract, spreading the money owed to him by the club over a longer amount of time.
The summer of 2022 brought more creative accounting to ensure new signings. Barça sold 25% of their LaLiga television rights to global investment firm Sixth Street for 25 years. The initial 10% was sold for €207.5m, and the next 15% for around €320m.
The asset sales continued with 49% of Barça Studios being sold to Socios.com and Orpheus Media for a combined €200m. That, combined with the television rights deals, allowed for Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha, whose arrivals cost the club over €100m, and free agents Christensen and Franck Kessié to be registered. It was not enough, however, to register defender Jules Koundé, signed from Sevilla for over €50m — though the Frenchman was eventually registered after directors provided a bank guarantee against future earnings.
In 2023, Barça successfully sought a court order to allow academy star Gavi’s registration to be transferred from the youth team to the first team.
The club then re-sold some of the shares in Barça Studios, now rebranded as Barça Vision, to a company called Libero, who purchased a 29.5% stake in the subsidiary for €120m. That deal was sufficient at the time to register Ilkay Gündogan, Iñigo Martínez and Oriol Romeu. However, the money from Libero never actually arrived and is one of the major reasons LaLiga have been so prudent in wanting to see proof of funds from the recent sale of the VIP boxes.
Another bank guarantee from directors was then required to register loan signings João Félix (from Atletico) and João Cancelo (Man City), while long-term injuries to Gavi, Ronald Araújo, Christensen and Ter Stegen have now all been utilised to help push through temporary registrations. It makes for a remarkable list and illustrates how close Barça have been to failing to register key players for years.
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What next for Olmo and Víctor?
For now, Barça are adamant they will solve the situation. A source told ESPN that Laporta will not speak publicly until Olmo and Víctor are registered.
And if they aren’t? “That scenario is not being considered,” the source added.
With the extra €28m now in the bank, Barça argued that certain hold-ups prevented them from meeting the Dec. 31 deadline and applied for a new licence for both players with the RFEF. However, RFEF rules clearly state that players cannot be re-registered with the same team for the second time in the same season, with a source at the RFEF also telling ESPN they “cannot process any licence without prior approval from LaLiga” regardless. A source close to the club added that Barça argued against the interpretation of that rule in this scenario.
With the latest rejection, Barça will take their case to court.
But Olmo and Víctor face being left in no-man’s land for at least six months. One option is that the players stay at Barça and train, as they have continued to do this week, but be unavailable for selection.
Olmo has a clause in his contract which allows him to leave for free if he remains unregistered, but sources close to the player have always insisted he does not plan to exercise it. His agent, Andy Bara, reiterated that point on Friday, saying Olmo is only thinking about a future at Barça, the club he played for until he was 16 before leaving for Dinamo Zagreb.
However, that stance may have to be re-considered. Due to no longer having a licence with the RFEF, after his registration was cancelled, even a short-term move away would be complicated. A loan would not be possible as it requires a prior license with a parent club. Therefore, a complicated agreement would have to be struck where Olmo’s contract is rescinded, allowing him to join another club for six months before returning to Barça to re-sign in the summer.
Víctor’s case would be similar, with sources telling ESPN that Real Betis, Espanyol and several clubs from the Segunda Division have asked to be informed if a short-term exit becomes a possibility.
Bizarrely, if both registrations are not processed, Barça could even find themselves in a situation this month whereby they are not able to re-register Olmo or Víctor, but they are allowed to sign players from elsewhere.
