If there is one thing guaranteed to make it difficult to sell players it is other clubs knowing you have to sell players. All those somethings he must be able to do, he had tried to do. Time, he said, was already up – even if the transfer window remains open for another three weeks. If Laporta didn’t say it was over, he showed that it was and despite hints the league had let them down, there was no hiding that the blame lay with Barcelona – the administration from which he had inherited this mess. Instead, he avoided false hopes – his and theirs – said those were hypothetical scenarios and said Barcelona had to live in the real world that he now laid before them.
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When he was asked if there was some way to fix this, if Messi could somehow stop this, if he could play for a small “symbolic” amount, Laporta didn’t say no, full stop. Wishful thinking, maybe, or the first stage of grief: denial before acceptance.
He was also silent, the slightest hint of a way back. If something had changed suddenly, overnight, couldn’t it be changed back? Might there be another twist? Messi was said to be in shock, devastated. Messi had flown back from Ibiza to sign, everything seemingly in place, or so they said, and now he was leaving. And yet he didn’t exactly say it was definitive and there was something not quite right about how it had been announced the night before: a short, blunt statement projecting outwards, as if seeking a reaction. He said he had planned to be there with Messi, announcing a new deal – “That was everyone’s dream” – but instead he had come to tell them how it came to this, to the departure of the one player Barcelona were desperate not to lose. Maybe Laporta had not entirely let go either, even as he knew it was gone. “The F1 car can leave the pits and return to the front row of the grid to compete and win again,” said Laporta.A little desperation was natural.
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But now the Club needs to activate the BLM and TV rights ‘levers’ to “correct the finances earlier than forecast, obtaining positive equity, paying off the debt in a sustainable manner, and being able to make the investments required for our professional teams to be more competitive,” said Laporta.Ĭontinuing with the comparison, the Barca president said that the economic levers will allow the club to return to the top and will allow them to compete and win trophies again. “We started the F1 car up, but it still couldn’t move. Talking during the event, Barcelona president Joan Laporta compared the club to a Formula One car that had ran out of fuel with a seized engine to explain the evolving finances at the club. The second one allows the club to sell 25% of their income from television rights over the course of the next 25 years. The first motion was to sell 49.9% of Barcelona Licensing and Merchandising. The virtual Extraordinary General Assembly approved both mechanisms to obtain an income of close to 600 million euros. The high salaries of the first team squad played a major role in the crisis and the economic situation was further affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the blame for the situation has been placed on former club president Josep Bartomeu, who resigned in 2020 amidst accusations of irregularities in his administration. The recent economic struggles of the Catalunyan side have been well-documented with these issues playing a major role in Lionel Messi’s exit from the club to Paris Saint-Germain last season. Barcelona have received a major boost in improving their current financial situation after the board members approved two operations on Thursday.