Limited in its recruitment, FC Barcelona must rebalance its accounts in order to respect the financial fair play of La Liga. An uncomfortable situation linked to certain irrelevant decisions by Barça, the biggest spending Spanish club over the past 10 years.
To explain the situation of FC Barcelona, president Joan Laporta does not hesitate to accuse his predecessor Josep Maria Bartomeu. It is true that the Catalan club, which is struggling to respect financial fair play in La Liga, and which had to sell assets to achieve this last summer, has made bad decisions in recent years.
The biggest spending club in Spain
Crazy sums have been invested in the transfer market with often disappointing results. Barça, which has not won the Champions League since 2015 with Luis Enrique, future coach of Paris Saint-Germain, has spent 1.6 billion euros on its recruitment for 10 years! Over the period, no Spanish team has bet more in the transfer window.
The figures relayed by Transfermarkt place Real Madrid, second, quite far behind with 1.2 billion euros invested. Of course, FC Barcelona has sometimes put their hands in their pockets with success. The €88m spent on Neymar and the €81m on Luis Suarez’s transfer paid off. In fact, the worst deals came after the Brazilian left for Paris Saint-Germain in 2017.
💰 🇪🇸 Estos son los futbolistas españoles más valiosos de LaLiga. Mayoría of FC Barcelona and Real Sociedad.
👉 https://t.co/yYAXOFFT6p#FCBarcelona #RealSociedad #LaLiga pic.twitter.com/wcpa8ZRjSp
— Transfermarkt.es (@TMes_news) June 20, 2023
Barça then rushed to pay 105 million euros (excluding bonuses) for Frenchman Ousmane Dembélé, who did not meet expectations because of his repeated injuries, before attracting the two huge flops Philippe Coutinho (135 million euros) and Antoine Griezmann (120 million euros). All with salaries as generous as the new contracts granted to certain executives. This is how Barça scuttled itself, by causing the departure and the impossible return of its legend Lionel Messi.
