FC Barcelona Finances

It will work out eventually I think, but on short term. But there will come a time when players will have to understand that Barcelona won't be able to pay the best salaries in world football for long. Not with oil-funded privately-owned-by-sheiks teams around, that can absorb a loss of 100m euros for example like it's nothing. Our budget is stretched as it is. It will come a time when we will have to say even to players like Messi, Suarez etc. "that's it guys, that's the end of the line for us. Can't pay you with more than that, without risking our financial status".

Then we will see who really loves the club above money. I mean, what the hell is the difference between 14m. a year say, and 18-20m. a year? If the club has money and doesn't pay you more, that could be interpreted as a sign that said club does not value you enough. Fair enough. But if the club does not have those money in the first place, then it's absurd to claim you are not valued. Football clubs, most of them anyway, don't have unlimited resources.

God knows I'm not a Masia fanatic on this forum, but we need to fix our academy fast, because what is based on skill is always more valuable and sustainable than what it is bought with something as volatile as money. Signing stars, highly payed players for every position is a very very very dangerous strategy.

Someone comes to Busquets and Iniesta in their prime and gives them double the money to leave Barca, I'm fairly confident they won't do it. But with Neymar for example, I'm not that sure.

It's one of the reasons I support signings like Arda. Turan seems to have an emotional connection with the club that goes beyond the figures printed on the contract. That's exactly the profile of player we should be after.

Very good post serge

serghei said:

It will work out eventually I think, but on short term. But there will come a time when players will have to understand that Barcelona won't be able to pay the best salaries in world football for long. Not with oil-funded privately-owned-by-sheiks teams around, that can absorb a loss of 100m euros for example like it's nothing. Our budget is stretched as it is. It will come a time when we will have to say even to players like Messi, Suarez etc. "that's it guys, that's the end of the line for us. Can't pay you with more than that, without risking our financial status".

Then we will see who really loves the club above money. I mean, what the hell is the difference between 14m. a year say, and 18-20m. a year? If the club has money and doesn't pay you more, that could be interpreted as a sign that said club does not value you enough. Fair enough. But if the club does not have those money in the first place, then it's absurd to claim you are not valued. Football clubs, most of them anyway, don't have unlimited resources.

God knows I'm not a Masia fanatic on this forum, but we need to fix our academy fast, because what is based on skill is always more valuable and sustainable than what it is bought with something as volatile as money. Signing stars, highly payed players for every position is a very very very dangerous strategy.

Someone comes to Busquets and Iniesta in their prime and gives them double the money to leave Barca, I'm fairly confident they won't do it. But with Neymar for example, I'm not that sure.

It's one of the reasons I support signings like Arda. Turan seems to have an emotional connection with the club that goes beyond the figures printed on the contract. That's exactly the profile of player we should be after.

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I agree with most of what you said, especially the importance of grooming home-grown players. But I feel it would be a total failure of gigantic proportion if we can't compete with other elite clubs in terms of paying some of the best wages in the industry.

I think players see things differently from how we fans see things: At the end of the day it is a business first and foremost to most of them. Yes many of them might have aspired to play for a certain team growing up, but we know for a fact that many, if not most ended up playing for different teams (just look at how many alleged Culé in the Real Madrid linup right now: Isco, Modric, Kroos?). Money matters and matters a lot to them. These footballers really are banking on their youth and these 10 - 15 years of their career to make a ton of money for their whole life and family so they would be attracted by higher wages at the expense of aspirations and desires to play for a certain team. You and I might ponder what is the difference between 14m and 18-20m when we can't make a fraction of that in our whole life; however to those players these extra couple of millions of increase in wages doesn't only matter monetarily, more importantly they see it as a vindication or recognition of their worth and their ego.

I know we are competing against those well-run clubs like Bayern and Real Madrid and those clubs that have limitless supply of money such as City and PSG, but at the end of the day if we can't do a good job getting enough money to come in to pay top and competitive wages for our players, we can't really expect us to continue to be one of the best teams in the world. Players will not just stay because of sentimental reasons. The best players will go to the best-paid clubs, like it or not.

The bottom line is we need to everything we can to broaden our revenue streams while doing the best to keep our expenses, including wages in check. If we get left behind by the likes of Bayern, Real Madrid and Manchester United, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Dani stayed for sentimetal reasons. Xavi, Puyol too. Not to mention many players who took a pay cut to join.

So if you think it just about X club offered more than y club then you are dead wrong.
Heck, even Neymar refused more money from Madrid and chose Barca instead.

Prospect of winning trophies for a club with great history, wonderful style, playing with your idols, in a beautiful city...

Players are money whores. I despise football for not producing even one star who'd give away a large share of his earnings and pressure other footballers to do the same. Because that wouldn't be a saintly act. There are so many selfish upsides to such a move. Still not enough I guess.

And as bojan just said, the rare pay cuts happen for personal footballing reason, they are inherently selfish decisions too.

Bojan said:

Dani stayed for sentimetal reasons. Xavi, Puyol too. Not to mention many players who took a pay cut to join.

So if you think it just about X club offered more than y club then you are dead wrong.
Heck, even Neymar refused more money from Madrid and chose Barca instead.

Prospect of winning trophies for a club with great history, wonderful style, playing with your idols, in a beautiful city...

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Yes you are right, but these players are a minority (home-grown players tend to do that of course). Most players are not like that and will not be like this.

Let's not be naive.

Also, if we fail on the pitch and fail to win trophies over time, the attractive-ness over players will decrease for sure.

What I am saying is we can't rely on sentimental appeals to attract players to come and continue to stay.

One thing is for sure, getting back La Masia it's glory would be a huuuuge asset in combining super expensive stars with home-grown/escudo-loving quality players.

Luftstalag14 said:

Yes you are right, but these players are a minority (home-grown players tend to do that of course). Most players are not like that and will not be like this.

Let's not be naive.

Also, if we fail on the pitch and fail to win trophies over time, the attractive-ness over players will decrease for sure.

What I am saying is we can't rely on sentimental appeals to attract players to come and continue to stay.

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Then phone Neymar and let him know that he was naive joining Barca when uncle Flo offered more. Phone Suarez for taking a paycut (or financing part of his transfer). Dani, I already mentioned. I think Mascherano took a paycut too.

Bojan said:

Then phone Neymar and let him know that he was naive joining Barca when uncle Flo offered more. Phone Suarez for taking a paycut (or financing part of his transfer). Dani, I already mentioned. I think Mascherano took a paycut too.

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Mathieu also took a pay cut.

Money is not our best asset anymore (if it ever was). We can't compete with clubs who pump money season after season after season because some Arab sheiks decided they want to invest their petrodollars in football. We need to be realistic here. We are on a budget against teams that seem to be able to spend as much as they want.

In the end the only logical outcome to the money madness in football is the european (world) superleague, a billionair's toy league with a few self made clubs trying to keep up in real life football manager.
Football is already kind of ruined for me but it continues to grow towards the point where I will lose interest all together eventually. In the grand scheme of things the football world is already a rich only bubble. Love the game, hate the way its heading. Already hated when we got Unicef on our shirt since as some of you remembered most of us predicted it to be a temporary small step towards a normal sponsor. Which we now deperately seem to need.
In the end it will be either adjust or stay behind. Barca as a club should adjust and go with the flow which means more and more commercialization and becoming an elite sport where normal fans cant afford a ticket. We have several years left but for me personally it wil end at some point, the whole qatar thing is already quite sickening to be honest.

Sorry for sounding a bit cold, to us fans this might be a passionate hobby or pastime, but to the industry it is a business where money is the lifeline, like in any other business.

Why did we have players willing to join us on a pay cut? Because of the Messi factor. Because of our success in the last 15 years or so. Imagine 10, 20 years from now, after Messi is long gone, IF we don't continue our success on the pitch, who is going to join us on a non-competitive wage, let alone a pay cut?? Do you think players will join us because of our past glories and "Més que un club" alone? And how do we sustain success on the pitch? First and foremost by having some of the best players playing for us. If we get extremely lucky we hit another jackpot like we did with Messi-Xavi-Iniesta-Busquets coming out of La Masia, great, but that is not very likely. Even if we managed to do that and avoided the hefty transfer fees that are going up and up like crazy, we still have to pay competitive wages to retain talents.

Let's be realistic. This is a business for the clubs and players. We need to be really financially prudent and well-managed to provide the financial/monetary foundation to continue to enable and sustain our success on the pitch.

TornAndFrayed said:

Players are money whores. I despise football for not producing even one star who'd give away a large share of his earnings and pressure other footballers to do the same. Because that wouldn't be a saintly act. There are so many selfish upsides to such a move. Still not enough I guess.

And as bojan just said, the rare pay cuts happen for personal footballing reason, they are inherently selfish decisions too.

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I don't blame them for being money whores. Loyalty is extremely overrated in football. Players who are past their primes are thrown out without even thinking twice, so why is it wrong if players in their prime wants to move out for money?? Footballers have a short earning shelf life, offcourse they have every right to think about their future.

So do you guys really think we will need to sell Neymar to help the funds? Hope not

barcafan161 said:

So do you guys really think we will need to sell Neymar to help the funds? Hope not

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No, they'd sell Masch, Alves, Vermaelen, Bartra, Arda, before selling Neymar.