Barcelona won't have trouble registering players - finance expert
The Catalan side have pulled two levers and brought in many high-profile stars
The economist Ivan Cabeza, an expert on Barcelona’s finances, is sure that when the window closes, the club will have registered “all the players they have signed because now they are in a normal situation”. They no longer have to invest only one euro for every three that are saved.
He explained as much in an interview with EFE. Barcelona are the club that have spent the most money; 153 million without counting variables, in this transfer market, and the world is wondering how.
The answer is not magic; it’s in the famous levers they pulled to bring in Robert Lewandowksi, Jules Kounde and Raphinha.
Selling 25 per cent of their future TV rights for the next 25 years to Sixth Street for 519 million euros - 667 in the books.
The first consequence of this - with 100 million euros going to Goldman Sachs to help pay off some of their loan - is Barcelona managing to get back into the black on the books after the 2020-21 season ended up at -451m euros.
"It is very likely that Barça has already received all the money from Sixth Street or, at least, a large part of it," Cabeza explained to EFE. Thus, this income is allowing them to undertake world-class signings that they could not have even dreamed of just a few months ago.
Lewandowski, Raphinha and Kounde are three big players who will allow Barça to fight for all the titles available. In addition, Franck Kessie and Andreas Christensen have arrived for free, and the transfer market still has a month to go.
Despite the fact that there is talk of the possible need to execute a new lever (the sale of up to 49% of Barça Studios, the club's audiovisual production company) or to sell valuable players such as the Dutch duo Frenkie de Jong and Memphis Depay, to be able to register all the signings, Cabeza does not consider it necessary.
"Thanks to the levers, Barça may now already have the capacity to register all the players they’ve signed up to now. And, if not, they are very close to achieving it.”
Of course, his assessments cannot be exact because the club has not made public many exact numbers.
The sale of the club's assets has allowed a huge shift in the economic and sporting situations. But only time will tell if the move has gone well for Joan Laporta's board in the medium to long term.
