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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.

 

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