Barça’s upcoming season is just around the corner, and the first under new president Joan Laporta with a full summer under his belt. However, anyone thinking that Laporta will bring a quick fix is sadly mistaken. Many, including Laporta, are now fully coming to grips of the dire condition this club is in financially, and that it is in need of a lengthy major cleanup.
Unless you’ve been in a coma for the past few years, it should come as no surprise that Barça is a financial mess. The club is drowning in debt thanks to many bad financial decisions by the previous regime, which is affecting how the club can prepare for the new season. La Liga’s President, Javier Tebas has warned the club that they will not be able to register Messi and the new signings unless they get under their salary cap. This requires shedding a lot of dead weight and bad contracts.
Unfortunately, not every player is on board when it comes to accepting a reduced salary and the pandemic is making is tougher to offload the deadwood. Laporta faced the same situation when he first became president of Barça back in 2003, and it took him a whole season before all the players deemed surplus were gone. This time around, the players he is trying to offload are ridiculously high earners, and some of them are also injury prone. Good luck finding any takers, or suckers, for players such as Umtiti, Coutinho, Griezmann and Pjanic in today’s football world.
Laporta’s first important challenge is cleaning up this toxic mess. He was successful the first time when he had the likes of Ferran Soriano by his side to steady the ship. We shall see if Laporta has surrounded himself with a proper crew to perform this difficult cleanup. However, don’t kid yourself into thinking that this will be a quick fix because this cleanup will take time, and unfortunately, time is not a luxury the fans have.
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