Laporta logró juntar dinero con rapide. In fact, large sums came under a program in which Barcelona sold the club’s assets—including years of commercial rights—to external investors. However, instead of using this effective cash flow to balance the accounting books, Laporta embarked on a descommunal shopping spree to bring in a ton of new players. The acquisitions left the club’s fortune dependent on sporting success, adding to the need to still have more new sources of income.
The results have been mixed. Barcelona’s position at the top of the Spanish league when it is halfway through the season, but a humiliating — and financially disastrous — elimination from the Champions League in the group stage has raised new questions about its financial prospects.
This week, Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, offered an explanation as to why Barcelona could not register a Gavi. Tebas mentioned that, from the point of view of the league, the new agreement would put Barcelona in violation of the financial limits when it entered into force.
In comments reported by Spanish news media this week, Tebas expressed: “The theme of no subscription comes as a consequence of the fact that there is no subscription that has an effect on the season that comes”, he said referring to the registration. Mentioned that the budget deficit of Barcelona for the next season would be more than 200 million euros —more than 217 million dollars— based on current revenue projections, so that “does not seem appropriate”.
With the negative categoricalness of the Spanish league to relax the regulations to allow Barcelona to register more players, the club’s board of directors took its plea to the local court.
In documents presented last Friday, the club said it could not sign Gavi with its new contract — which it had accepted in September — to close the January transfer window, “implicating the freedom of this year, therefore, a perjuicio very big and irreparable for the FC Barcelona”.
If the failure persists, LaLiga’s fiscal regulations that have been in place for decades and have been established with contributions from the clubs in an effort to reduce volatility, would end up being impossible to enforce and teams could challenge the regulations in civil courts. To a large extent, Barcelona has been isolated by not being able to stay within the designated spending limit, which is calculated as a percentage of the income of each team from its football operations.