The alarm signal was drawn by one of the relatives of Joan Laporta, former president of FC Barcelona (2003-2010), but above all an intimate enemy of Josep Maria Bartomeu, currently at the head of the club but targeted by a motion of censorship. The analysis should therefore be taken with a grain of salt, but has the merit of accounting for the catastrophic economic situation in which Barça would be entangled.
In an interview granted in the Spanish daily AS this Tuesday, the Catalan economist Marc Ciria depicted a club whose finances are drawing bright red, where the debt has risen from 740 million euros before the Covid-19 pandemic to 820 million euros today. According to the man of figures, the Barcelona club, which had announced that it had closed its 2018-19 financial year with a record turnover of 990 million euros – and was then targeting one billion euros in 2021 -, would even be forced to use the profits already created by the Espai Barça real estate project (a huge sports center planned for 2024-25 including the redesign of the Camp Nou, and which should ultimately generate significant profits) in order to pay its employees.
???????? The economist Marc Ciria, who was part of Laporta’s team, warns of the disastrous state of the club’s accounts in an interview with EFEhttps://t.co/cWMXDWTLmP
– Diario AS (@diarioas) October 13, 2020
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A vertiginous payroll
Faced with this situation, the economist ensures that Catalan leaders will also have to take out a loan from the investment bank Goldman Sachs in order to pay the debts. To prevent the club from imploding economically, Marc Ciria offers three solutions: let a wealthy shareholder take control of a large part of the club by transforming its legal structure, reduce the influence of members so that a less powerful shareholder can pay off the debt, or drastically reduce the lifestyle of the Blaugrana workforce.
In 2019, Lionel Messi, the highest paid footballer in the world, earned € 86.9 million in gross annual salaries. While last May, Barça devoted 630 million euros to players, on a budget of 1,047 million euros including salaries and depreciation. So more than half of the budget of the club, which has the most important payroll in world football.
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