On the same day that Barça’s economic vice-president, Jordi Moix, defended in a press conference to update Barça’s obscure accounts that, “contrary to what is said”, Barça is not a club that makes bad sales of players ”, The entity closed the last hours of the football market almost giving away Rafinha Alcántara to PSG. The Parisian club has obtained its services in exchange for a transfer consisting of 3 million in variables plus 35% of a future sale. A few hours earlier, at noon, Moix had released the phrase after presenting a balance sheet of the club’s sports investments for the last ten seasons. The board that has lived the presidencies of Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu in the last decade has spent (before the last operations on Monday) 1,682 million in signings and has entered 944 in sales (222 million of these by the clause of Neymar who paid PSG in the summer of 2017).
The sale of Rafinha, who learned on Monday of the operation with PSG and flew to Paris on a charter flight to undergo a medical, is one of the most obvious examples of the need for Barça’s treasury to release too much. salary at any price. The club, despite wanting to enter the 16 million in which the clause of a footballer who does not count for Ronald Koeman was valued, practically gave it away on the horn to a Parisian team that, apart from being a direct rival in Europe, is an entity that has closed the door on Barça in numerous negotiations (Verrati, Thiago Silva, Rabiot…) and that Neymar stepped on.
Rafinha’s transfer followed a formula similar to the sales of Arturo Vidal (at Inter Milan in exchange for 1 million in variables), Luis Suárez (at Atletico Madrid in exchange for 6 million in variables) and Rakitic (in Seville for a symbolic transfer of 1.5 million and 9 more in variables). But in the high files of these players, superior to that of the Brazilian midfielder -who also had an important card, which made it difficult for him to return to Celta de Vigo, as the Galician club could not take it in full-, to this must be added the condition that the heavyweight march of the dressing room was key in the renovation initiated by Ronald Koeman.
Dest, the only newcomer to the “revolution”
The “revolution” that President Josep Maria Bartomeu promised after the historic defeat in Lisbon has resulted in the arrival of the Dutch coach in place of a defunct Quique Setién, the resignation of Eric Abidal as technical secretary and the casualties of Suárez, Vidal, Rakitic, Semedo and Rafinha, plus the transfers of Todibo (Benfica) and Wagué (PAOK). As for the arrivals, only one new face has been closed after the 2-8: the side Sergiño Dest. The other transfers (Pjanic, Trincao, Pedri and Matheus Fernandes) are operations that had previously been closed. Philippe Coutinho and Carles Aleñá return after their transfers to Bayern Munich and Betis, respectively.
The refusal of Ousmane Dembélé to accept a paid transfer to sign for Manchester United – the Frenchman, as reported yesterday by Catalunya Ràdio, would be planning his long-term departure to Juventus – and the fact of settling the loss of Todibo with only one loan (in exchange for 2 million euros) instead of doing it with a transfer, left the Barça managers without enough financial muscle to be able to execute the desired operations of Eric García (for whom Manchester City wanted about 20 million and Memphis Depay, who already had an agreement with Barça.
The two players will end their contracts in 2021 and from January they will be free to negotiate their future. The Barça technical secretariat is confident of re-attempting the arrival of the trained center at the Barça youth center when the winter market window opens and that, then, the club citizen be open to lowering the price of the Catalan footballer.
An atypical market
The red lines marked by Barça’s coffers, exhausted in recent years – exchanges have been made to square numbers, such as the Cillessen-Neto and Pjanic-Arthur operations – and now hit by the coronavirus pandemic, have conditioned this atypical market that Barça’s technical secretary, Ramon Planes, described a few days ago as “the most complicated in recent years”. “The pandemic has completely conditioned the transfer market this summer. Not only because of the change of dates, but because some clubs have had to pay salaries beyond what they had planned, as the closing of the competitions has been prolonged “, explains Marc Menchén, director and founder of the business platform for in the 2playbook sports industry.
“While in a regular market clubs prioritize entering through transfers, in this one it has become very important to release too much salary. In a normal market there are transfers and the clubs release tokens to carry out other operations, but in the current one many clubs have not been able to place their players on loan because the receiving clubs could not take over the tokens ”. Here is the paradigm of the case of Samuel Umtiti, who receives a high salary from Barça, which, together with his dubious performance and physical condition, makes him a prisoner in Barcelona and a chimera to enter a transfer for him.
On the other hand, Menchén explains that the particularities of this market have allowed “clubs with economic projection to benefit from signings at lower prices”, as is the case of Villarreal in the Spanish league or clubs-state wealthy like PSG, which thanks to the injections of money from its Qatari owner is not an entity that needs to be a seller and has benefited from the transfer of Rafinha, because Barça did need to release too much salary. The only way to try to see the glass half full in the Rafinha operation is for PSG to end up transferring it and Barça to be able to take a bite out of it. In any case, the message that the Barça club has sent to the market with this transfer is one of weakness.
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