Who is to blame for Messi’s exit from Barcelona? Even something as beautiful as Barcelona and Lionel Messi’s 21-year relationship can be broken by the cold, hard logic of debt. Barcelona and Messi did not want to leave Barcelona, but a force greater than either of them ultimately tore them apart, much like the tragic end of a romantic comedy. Messi and Barcelona did not want to leave Barcelona.
The man who is widely considered to be the greatest football player ever wept and told the Catalan media on August 8 that he was forced to leave: The club did not want to take on more debt.
The blame has been placed in a variety of ways on Barcelona fans, who are looking for answers. The club’s leadership has been accused of bad management; It has been criticized that the league follows its rules; It has been argued that Messi put money ahead of loyalty. So, exactly what caused the tragic departure of the Argentine superstar?
Following Messi’s haphazard departure from Barcelona
The blame game began immediately. There is unquestionably a significant amount of shared responsibility. The fan-owned team has been mismanaged to such an extent that it has only spent $1.30 on player salaries for every euro (or $1.17) it has earned.
Because, by definition, expenditures have outstripped revenues, the club has been relying on a growing debt burden to pay for big-name signings and their extravagant pay packages. The total amount owed by the club has now reached 1.1 billion euros. Messi claims that he did everything in his power to stay, and he had agreed to take a pay cut of fifty percent.
However, his previous contract included a “loyalty bonus” of 78 million euros ($91 million) and 115 million euros ($135 million) for signing the contract, making it the highest amount ever paid to a sportsperson over the course of four years.
If he had agreed to play for Barca for free for a season to help the club he loves get through its problems, he could have been the highest-paid footballer in the world for the past half-decade. Additionally, there is La Liga, which is in charge of the top two football divisions in Spain. In 2013, it established new financial guidelines for clubs based on an analysis of their financial health.
The amount of money a club can spend on its playing team in a single season is limited by these rules. La Liga discovered that Barcelona had to comply with the rules by cutting player salaries by 47.1%, from 656 million euros ($770 million) to 347 million euros ($407 million), as a result of the pandemic’s financial impact.
Barcelona’s President Stated
That the club’s inability to re-sign Messi was due to La Liga’s refusal to alter its rules. However, in 2013, Barca and the other 19 La Liga clubs happily agreed to these regulations. Placing financial regulations at the heart of Barcelona’s problems is a bit like blaming a doctor for stopping you from cutting off your own hand.
The financial crisis in Barcelona will not be resolved by spending more extravagantly. A more rational approach to La Liga’s position would be to ask why the rules weren’t more stringent to prevent the club from getting into such a mess.
In point of fact, La Liga was so determined to keep Messi in Spain that they agreed to a deal in principle last week to sell a 10% stake in the league to private equity firm CVC partners for a cool $3 billion that would be split among the 20 clubs.
Laporta stated that while this financial boost would have provided the club with the additional funds necessary to re-sign Messi, it would have necessitated selling a stake in the league’s financial future, most notably the TV broadcasting rights, which he was unable to support.
In an Industry
that lavishes financial rewards on those who win big, there are clear, rational incentives to throw caution to the wind. This is the Club’s risky approach. Despite the finger-pointing, it is clear that this is a structural issue, and the club’s risky approach was just the tip of a much larger wedge.
Barcelona signed the most recent superstars in an effort to position the club as one of two or three at the financial and sporting apex of world football prior to Messi’s departure. In this regard, it was not only competing with Real Madrid, which was its archrival and also a club with a lot of debt and the same goals of being the best team in the world.
It was also trying to compete with Paris St. Germain, a new rival with enormous wealth. Which appears to be on its way to acquiring Messi and the giants of English football clubs, which receive significantly more money each year for TV broadcasting, has already enticed Neymar away from the Catalan capital with Qatari cash.
under the direction of Josep Maria Bartomeu, the previous president. It’s clear that the club made bad decisions about transfers. for instance, shelling out nine figures for three flops. Antione Griezmann, Ousmane Dembélé, and Philippe Coutinho However, the short-term pursuit of sporting glory made some business sense. to close the commercial gap with their European competitors.
whereas the breakaway competition was abandoned by the six English clubs that had also signed up. In April, after a few days of intense fan opposition, the concept was born. The disparity in TV money partially explains why Real Madrid, Juventus, and Barcelona have been. the most determined to pursue the Super League in the future.
Those three clubs assert.
That they are still planning a new competition in which the wealthiest European clubs would determine the budget. In point of fact, the Super League concept is currently merely a bargaining chip. for a financial arrangement between their domestic leagues and UEFA that is more favorable. the governing body of European football.
despite the fact that Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, is constantly under pressure to guarantee that Real Madrid and Barca have more and more money. so that they can continue to be brands that compete globally. Already, La Liga’s broadcasting revenues heavily favor its two major clubs.
This objective of dominating the world was strongly supported by the head of La Liga. Even in 2014, a year after new financial restrictions were established, he stated. that he desired La Liga’s “best 500 players” to surpass the English Premier League as the world’s most profitable domestic competition. Spain’s football authorities were unconcerned at the time. What would happen if revenue growth was unable to continue?
In conclusion
Just like Barcelona, businesses all over the world are competing with one another in a seemingly never-ending race for growth. in the belief that being able to invest more money now will make In the future, the company will grow and become more profitable. Debt is the tool used to accelerate that growth.
However, there are always limits to growth in reality. irrespective of whether it is the result of a deadly pandemic or transfer market errors. When those limits become apparent, the debt becomes unmanageable.