{"id":44078,"date":"2022-08-13T08:12:08","date_gmt":"2022-08-13T08:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/report-fc-barcelona-register-robert-lewandowski-one-day-before-season-opener\/"},"modified":"2022-08-13T08:12:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-13T08:12:08","slug":"report-fc-barcelona-register-robert-lewandowski-one-day-before-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/report-fc-barcelona-register-robert-lewandowski-one-day-before-season-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: FC Barcelona register Robert Lewandowski one day before season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Spanish sun sets on the eve of La Liga’s opening weekend. When it rises Saturday morning, FC Barcelona will have finally completed the registration of six out of seven new signings this summer, including former Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski, per numerous reports. <\/p>\n

From the Daily Mail:<\/p>\n

\n

Barcelona sold a further 24.5 percent of Bar\u00e7a Studios on Friday and when the Spanish League’s Economic Control department reviewed the details of the latest sell-off it was able to confirm that Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, Franck Kessie, Andreas Christensen could all now be registered.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One final signing \u2014 center-back Joules Kound\u00e9 \u2014 will have to continue to wait to be eligible for competitive matches as the Blaugrana continue to monitor yet more players in this not-yet-concluded transfer window.<\/p>\n

Kound\u00e9’s registration will reportedly depend on further reduction of the wage bill \u2014 to be achieved either through player sales or salary deferrals. As he’s still coming back from surgery, there’s time. The club have until September 1st.<\/p>\n

How Bar\u00e7a achieved this<\/strong><\/h2>\n

First, let’s be clear that this was never a surprising outcome \u2014 except in the lateness of the hour. Barcelona did not spend big this summer without merited confidence that, one way or another, they would be able to use those players. The question has always been what is entailed by \u201cor another.\u201d<\/p>\n

It remains that the club was recently \u20ac1.3 billion in debt, incurred a \u20ac400 million loss last season, and were allotted a negative \u20ac144 million against the La Liga salary limit this March, per figures from The Guardian. To find cash, there are traditional ways \u2014 raising funds and offloading wages \u2014 and more creative ones. Namely, the financial levers.<\/p>\n

Every lever pulled this summer by FC Leverpull (h\/t BFW staff writer RIP_London_Teams) is essentially borrowing from the future: a selling-off of portions of revenue streams over the long term in order to deliver massive immediate cash injections to balance the books. There’s a reason these were not the first resort, and their costs will be felt in every subsequent season for some time to come.<\/p>\n

Barcelona had previously expressed confidence that three of these financial levers would suffice. La Liga found that they did not \u2014 \u201cjudging that Barcelona had used \u20ac150 million of their own money to inflate the values \u200b\u200bof the deals\u201d, per The Guardian. <\/p>\n

Therefore, the fourth lever was activated on Friday; its effect being that now 49% of their in-house \u201cmedia arm\u201d Barca Studios has been sold off. This brought in an additional \u20ac100 million, per The Athletic, and was also sufficient only for four out of the seven players with status outstanding.<\/p>\n

Cue the player hounding. Among possible departures are still Frenkie de Jong, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Memphis Depay. Others have big salaries that the club have tried to reduce. But since none of this was likely to materialize in time for Saturday’s opener against Rayo Vallecano, center-back Gerard Piqu\u00e9 has apparently come to the rescue.<\/p>\n

Deferrals and Pique<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Pique is now 35 and had already deferred his salary to help the club cope with their financial crisis and register new players in the past. He’s no longer a top choice at the club but, per ARA, he was owed \u20ac 52 million for just the 2022\/23 season as a result of those prior deferrals.<\/p>\n

This is the problem with salary deferrals, which the likes of De Jong, Jordi Alba, and Sergio Busquets had also taken previously. Last August, it was an emergency measure to help the club register free signings Memphis Depay (forward) and Eric Garc\u00eda (center-back). This August, the club have come at some of the same players again in order, in part, to register more forwards (Robert Lewandowski) and more center-backs (Andreas Christensen, Joules Kound\u00e9).<\/p>\n

The Athletic is reporting as of Friday \u2014 the day before the Rayo Vallecano opener \u2014 that Gerard Piqu\u00e9 is the player who is willing to reduce his wages for a second consecutive year, and to a \u201cdrastic\u201d extent:<\/p>\n

\n

As part of these efforts, Pique has informed Barcelona that he is willing to drastically reduce his salary this season in order to help the club register new signings.<\/p>\n

Sources have suggested the 35-year-old’s reduction could be to the extent that he effectively does not receive a salary for the 2022-23 campaign, although he would then take a wage during the final year of his contract in the 2023-24 season , but the final details are still to be thrashed out.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Piqu\u00e9 is being hailed as a hero by the Bar\u00e7a faithful, though it remains unclear to what extent this is another deferral. And while it is apparently his prerogative to do as he wishes out of professional love for his m\u00e9s que un club<\/em>it is also both a standard that is tough to ask others to follow, and dubious to any fair play or competitive balance goals that might have been intended in the financial rules.<\/p>\n

That standard is already being applied as a skewer to like Frenkie de Jong, who last week was threatened with an annulled contract over of criminality on the part of the club’s previous board by the club’s current board \u2014 La Liga’s approval of that contract .<\/p>\n

De Jong is still with the club for now \u2014 love, eh? \u2014 But his reluctance to demonstrate that \u201clove\u201d even more with his bank account has resulted in fans hurling jeers and vulgarities <\/a>horse him. Quite the contrast.<\/p>\n

Was all this necessary?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The question is not whether or not these chickens will come home to roost, but how soon, to what extent, and for whom. It may well be the case that current FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta has no intention of dealing with the long-term aftermath of his actions, betting everything on securing immediate glory.<\/p>\n

The club very clearly and publicly did not wish to activate all four of their financial levers unless they had to \u2014 but have ended up doing just that. The calculation seems to be that these new signings were necessary on an existential level, with the club otherwise facing utter sporting disaster or worse, insolvency.<\/p>\n

Yet this was a club that finished second in La Liga in 2021\/22 amid a coaching change and comfortably in the Champions League positions; who just last year brought in talented players on free transfers that they are now all trying to replace; and who have a number of the world’s most heralded teenage sensations \u2014 among them 19-year-old midfielder Pedri, 18-year-old midfielder Gavi, and 19-year-old winger Ansu Fati. In January, they agreed to pay Manchester City \u20ac55 million + \u20ac10 million add-ons for winger Ferran Torres. They have an outstanding young center-back in 23-year-old Ronald Ara\u00fajo.<\/p>\n

They also have a young coach in 42-year-old Xavi Hern\u00e1ndez, a former star player of theirs who could have been given time and patience to develop a young coterie of next-generation talent as his club stabilized their finances. <\/p>\n

Instead, Barcelona felt it necessary to build the complete team in one fell swoop, and are still eyeing players like Chelsea FC’s 31-year-old left wing-back Marcos Alonso and Manchester City’s nearly \u20ac80 million-rated<\/a> star midfielder Bernardo Silva (28). <\/p>\n

If the Catalan club does not immediately secure a Champions League trophy \u2014 and bear in mind, there are still other good teams out there, among them Pep Guardiola’s City, J\u00fcrgen Klopp’s Liverpool FC, and our own FC Bayern \u2014 what will happen with the new acquisitions, some of them closer to the twilight of their careers than the start, and the other salary deferrals amid a crimped revenue stream?<\/p>\n

One thing is for sure. Barcelona have assembled a considerable array of exciting talent to go into this season with, and they wholly cashed in a considerable amount of their assets in order to do so. What that will get them, and how they will sustain this financially and whether there’s any sort of plan should they fall short of monumental success \u2014 it’s not at all clear.<\/p>\n

In for a penny, in for a pound. There’s no looking back now.<\/p>\n