BarcelonaA few hours before the whistle blows and the start of the 2022-23 season, many teams in the League are still working hard to be able to start the competition with full guarantees, despite signing up the new faces they have fixed. Another year, everything points to the fact that the League will once again be a doubleheader between Barça and Real Madrid. Except for the two main powers, and despite the rain of millions of CVC, the rest of the clubs fight with what they can to strengthen themselves, register the additions and not lose competitiveness.
Barça did the unthinkable a few months ago. In exchange for losing assets in pieces, the club has been able to drop 150 million on the signings of Raphinha, Lewandowski and Kounde and hopes to spend more to bring in Marcos Alonso and Bernardo Silva. Kessie and Christensen have bought them free of charge. For its part, Madrid has only made two signings, one as a free agent, Rüdiger, and the other, Tchouaméni, in exchange for around 100 million between fixed and variable.
Some chimerical numbers for the rest of the teams in the competition, which despite having received financial support by selling a percentage of their television rights for the next 50 years, have not translated the income into sports reinforcements. As the terms of the agreement with CVC contemplated only a 15% investment in players, some teams arrive on the first day with homework to do in terms of fair play financial Barça is one of them, but there are more. And they are doing what they can to get rid of players who can give a positive financial return, with the Premier League as the best bidder. Registrations are being made on the horn, but the clubs are facing many difficulties due to the strict financial requirements set by the employer.
Sevilla open the competition this Friday at Osasuna, and like other teams they needed to get rid of players in order to sign new ones. He had to sell his pair of starting central players – Diego Carlos to Aston Villa and Kounde to Barça – to have enough salary space. Thus, after these sales, this week they were able to register the new signings, with the ex-Madrid player Isco Alarcón as the most media person of all. Marcao, from Galatasaray, will cover the defensive gap.
In the other Sevilla team the situation is much worse. Betis has not been able to balance the economic gap it has due to the lack of player departures and still cannot register the three signings it has made, in addition to the four players it has renewed. At this point, everything points to the fact that the Andalusian team will not be able to sign up all the players and Manuel Pellegrini still does not know who he will be able to count on for the first League match. The uncertainty affects, among others, the veterans Joaquín, Claudio Bravo and Guardado, as well as Luiz Filipe, Luiz Henrique and Willian José, who together have an investment of 18 million. The reason for this cap is the difficulty in finding an outlet for contracted players like Carvalho and Bartra.
At Villarreal, the situation is also complicated: their spending on signings does not reach a million euros, a derisory amount for a team with a recent path in European competitions. On the other hand, Valencia had to sell one of their best players, Gonçalo Guedes, to the Premier League, for more than 30 million. With Jorge Mendes at the helm, as Can Barça, he has been able to place the player in his particular branch, Wolverhampton, coached by men from his agency. Atlético de Madrid has only spent around 26 million euros for two players, Nahuel Molina and Samuel Lino (on loan to Valencia), and has also had many complications to be able to register them in the salary limits of the competition, in addition to the free players who have arrived, such as Witsel.
Levers are becoming fashionable
To avoid joining the CVC project and, at the same time, be able to sign and register players, Laporta activated the famous levers, but at this time it seems that this is not enough to be able to register all the new faces. However, the exclusivity of the levers is not only held by Barça, as there are two clubs in the League that have also wanted to join the trend to square numbers and reduce the wage bill that worries the teams so much.
These are the cases of Betis and Valencia. The Andalusian team is looking for a loan in exchange for mortgaging the future income from the subscriptions of the entity, with the aim of selling 50% and raising between 20 and 30 million euros, and thus being able to fix the difficult situation that the entity has with the registration of players. In Valencia they are in the hands of Peter Lim, since the famous lever they are looking for is for the Singaporean owner to make an additional investment of capital that will help square the Valencian coffers.
The sad comparison with the Premier
Meanwhile, the Premier League lives in another galaxy: millions for undervalued players, unrepentant investments, newly promoted teams spending more than a European club in the League… Many voices claim that the Super League already exists, and it’s called Premier League. One of those who have spoken out loud has been Adriano Galliani, general manager of Silvio Berlusconi’s Monza, which has just been promoted to the Italian Serie A. Galliani has proposed a Tuttosport a “Brexit in football”, a Super League without the English teams to be able to end their economic superiority and solve the inequality that European teams have with respect to the English league.
Making a ‘Brexit’ in football would mean ending the inequality that the Premier League represents”
Adriano Galliani CEO of Monza, from Serie A
With just over three weeks left for the market to close, the twenty Premier League teams have spent almost 1.5 billion euros on signings. If we look at the Spanish league, the investment in signings does not reach 410 million, and of these, 233 are spent by Barça and Madrid. An astronomical difference that only reaffirms the words of Galliani and other experts, who see the English league as a danger to the future of European competitions.
