BarcelonaThe fair play financial is a headache that seems to have no end for Barça. The club’s financial problems are compounded by the fact that the League is collecting more and more. As ARA has been able to learn, Barça has appealed three sanctions that the employer’s economic control committee has imposed on it for events that occurred during the 2021-2022 academic year: exceeding the salary limit with the signings of Dani Alves and Andreas Christensen ( the League considers that it affects the past financial year despite not having been registered until the current one), and with the renewal of Ronald Araújo. In total, the three sanctions add up to almost 800,000 euros.
Barça, in these cases, has submitted resources to the RFEF’s UEFA second-instance license committee, the body that until now has been in charge of assessing these kinds of issues, as set out in the state’s social statutes chaired by Javier Tebas. But this mechanism could change very soon. The League promoted changes in articles 43, 44 and 78 bis at its last assembly, held in Dubai on December 7. The texts have been adapted to accommodate a new body: the social resource committee. Thus, if Tebas’ intentions are approved by the CSD, it will replace the RFEF’s UEFA second-instance licensing committee, which is made up of four members appointed by the Federation and three by the League, which have usually been opposed to appeals presented by Barça. Instead, the members of the social committee of resources, who will be a president and two or four members, will be appointed by the delegated commission of the League at the proposal of the corporate general management.
“The appeal before the second instance UEFA license committee of the RFEF is deleted”, dictates the new text of the employers’ association’s social statutes and to which the ARA has had access. “As a result of the new sports bill, and the accumulated practical experience, it is advisable to review the existing resource model in the League, unifying it to a dual internal instance model that gives way to the possible resource external”, argues the organization chaired by Tebas. And he adds: “(this committee) ceases to make sense in the new model, because it has a collegiate and specialized internal body, whose resolutions quickly give way to external challenge avenues”. This newspaper asked Barça for its opinion on the likely changes and the answer was that it had “nothing to say”.
Levers are no longer used for signing
Another of the novelties is that the body will limit the levers that during the last signing market served to increase Barça’s ability to sign. In fact, the entity’s forecast was to use another, the sale of 49% of BLM, the Barça merchandising, this summer. The League will allow Barça, or any other club, to activate them, but will only allow 5% of the money entered to be used to sign or renew players. The exception will be when the asset that is intended to be sold is a new line of business that the entity has created. The club in question will then be able to make use of the total of the extra income.
The new limitations don’t end there. If a club sells a footballer for a transfer figure higher than the average of what it usually gets (for example, the 222 million euros that PSG paid for Neymar in 2017), the body chaired by Tebas will force it to present a treasury plan that shows that it will be able to pay, at least, for the next two years the player that will sign or renew thanks to this money. But it’s not all bad news for Barça. The 1/4 rule (you can use one euro for every four you save) that so affected the club chaired by Joan Laporta in the summer will pass to a better life. From this winter market, clubs that have exceeded the salary cap will be able to spend 40% of the saved figure as long as a treasury plan is also presented.
He will not be able to sign during the winter market
These measures come in a context in which the relationship between the League and Barça is increasingly tense. Especially after the club did not accept the agreement with CVC for the sale of television rights proposed by the organization and closed a similar operation and first more effective with Sixth Street. The declarations and counter-declarations between Tebas and Laporta have been common in recent times. In addition, the club already knows that, if it does not get extra income from the sale of players or with the arrival of new sponsorships, it will not be able to sign this winter market. In fact, Laporta himself already recognized it in November: “We and some clubs are trying to convince the League to be more flexible and allow us another type of interpretations that can make us even stronger”, he said then the highest representative of Barça in an interview with the Efe agency. In addition, he complained that “the Premier League is more flexible”, which, according to Laporta, “doesn’t make much sense” because he considered that the regulations of the fair play economic of the various European leagues should be equalized.
