Skip to main content

Is the Barcelona model coming to an end?

FC Barcelona is in an acute crisis. But it’s also in a chronic, long-term crisis writes Simom Kuper in the Financial Times.

Even if the club can fix the current mess, it’s hard to see how it can retain its spot at the top of football. His new book Barça: The Inside Story of the World’s Greatest Football Club traces a fall from a golden age. 

Barça’s gross debt is now about €1.2bn. La Liga’s financial rules bar the club from spending money it doesn’t have on registering new players.  This week Barcelona announced that its star player Lionel Messi will be forced to leave the club due to the regulations imposed by La Liga, Spain’s top division.

After Messi, help may come from CVC Capital Partners’ proposed injection of €2.7bn into La Liga. Though the money reportedly isn’t supposed to be spent on players, some of it may find its way into Barcelona’s wage bill, easing the acute crisis, although club chief Joan Laporta claimed the deal isn't in Barca's best interests. Still, that leaves the chronic one. 

In the 2019-20 season, Barcelona have just hung on to its title as the world’s highest-grossing football club with annual revenues of €715.1m, according to consultants Deloitte.  But Real Madrid and Bayern Munich were already closing the gap, and should overtake the Catalans after Barça’s failed 2020-21 season. 

Sponsors are also cooling on Barcelona. Last October, shirt sponsor Rakuten renewed its contract for only one more season, until 2022, and for just €30m plus bonuses, which was €25m a year less than the previous deal. 

Barça’s prize money has fallen. And the Camp Nou stadium, built in 1957 and barely renovated since 1982, looks tatty beside the shiny stadiums with ample commercial space that have shot up around Europe.  

Kuper can’t see what Barça’s USP is after Messi. Perhaps the Barcelona model is coming to an end.

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reports about Charlton sale exaggerated

Reports have appeared in The Guardian and elsewhere that Charlton has been put up for sale. Richard Cawley is an authoritative local journalist who runs a South London Sport substack site.  He reached out to the club yesterday evening to ask for comment on The Guardian’s article. Early indications from the club have been that nothing has changed since the story about them seeking investment, except that it is now a different company doing it. Charlton have since managed to consolidate their place in the Championship, avoiding an instant return to League One, with their women’s side promoted to the WSL, returning to the top flight for the first time since 2007, although staying there is likely to be costly. It would be counter-intuitive for owners Global Football Partners not to progress the club when looking for investment, that the focus remains on driving it forward, that their spend this summer is in line with long-term planning and will see an increase in wages spent on players...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hull City's 'strange' loan

When football finance guru Kieran Maguire seems flashing lights in a club's loan deal, I become concerned.  He is the leading football finance expert in the UK. Hull City have borrowed £55m against their stadium and training ground yet they should get £30m from the Premier League before long.  What is going on? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cpwel48y51do
Post a Comment
Read more