Barça are working on the idea of making two or three signings in the winter market. Above all, it examines several options in attack, which is where the squad goes fairer. The clearest is Ferran Torres, a young Manchester City striker valued at 70 million who wants to leave the Premier League to lead Xavi’s project. The focus has also been on Pep Guardiola’s neighboring rival, United, and specifically on two players with quite opposite profiles: Anthony Martial, versatile and with more projection (26 years old), and Edinson Cavani, specialist striker and experienced (34). Negotiation with the attacker citizen it is to be acquired as property, as it is considered a strategic value. Instead, Martial and Cavani’s solutions would be more temporary. These are two players who have asked to leave the team now coached by Ralf Rangnick because they have too much competition: Cristiano Ronaldo, Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford, etc.
The Barça executive is working on it, but opening the door to arrivals – beyond cheap signings like Dani Alves – is subject to two major lines of action. One is to get rid of the tall tabs of the squad that have a residual role, like Coutinho and Umtiti. The other is to embrace the immediate injection of money involved in consigning the League’s agreement with the CVC fund. As reported by ARA on December 3, the difficulty of selling or selling assets in the middle of the year means that the pact with the British fund is the shortest way to be able to have a salary margin. An operation that the club publicly rejected at the club assembly last Friday, in line with the criteria of Florentino Pérez and Real Madrid, but which at the same time is negotiating tailor-made to be able to achieve the fair play financial that he needs to be able to rebuild the project after the traumatic departure of Leo Messi. In this sense, as RAC1 explained on Monday, Barça is moving at the request of its main creditor, Goldman Sachs, which is also part of CVC and is interested in the agreement. The American bank is aware that sports planning affects the rest of the club’s activity, hence it participates in the talks to encourage CVC to act as a partner and contribute capital instead of more debt. The fact that Goldman Sachs will bear the cost of the construction of the new stadium would also make the deal more flexible, a sum that CVC, which covers part of the investment in Spanish football in terms of infrastructure, should not pay.
If Barça and CVC finally shake hands, something that did not happen in the summer with Messi or a few days ago at the headquarters of the League, the alliance with Florentino and Real Madrid in the first months of Joan Laporta’s term could be affected. So far the two greats of state football have gone hand in hand on issues such as the Super League, the end of endorsements and CVC. Now Barça’s extreme need, the result of a disastrous legacy that the current government has difficulty managing, can change this dynamic.
