Will Messi’s tragedy be repeated with Lewandowski?
In August 2021, Blaugrana did not renew Lionel Messi’s contract as he exceeded the spending limit set by La Liga. Why didn’t the club’s leaders resolve the financial issues in advance so that the main signature of the summer was possible is a big question.
A year later, the same is repeated for Robert Lewandowski and all the other star blue garnet newcomers purchased this summer for a total of 164m euros.
The only difference is that Barcelona still sold a few players by 31 August and asked one of the team to take a substantial salary cut to meet La Liga’s financial needs.
However, serious problems have arisen with this and the way the club has resolved them looks very bad so far.
De Jong scandal
The Barcelona administration, led by President Joan Laporta, initially identified for themselves the four simplest ways to solve the financial problem:
1) sell some TV rights of the club to get quick cash for this summer’s transfers;
2) Selling 25-year-old midfielder Frenkie de Jong for 80m euros and at the same time forcing him to give up the 20m euros that the club still owes him (the midfielder has agreed to delay the payment of 16m euros in 2020) team heavily due to the coronavirus pandemic salary and 4 million bonus for incurring losses);
3) sell a few more players for a smaller amount (main candidates include striker Memphis Depay and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen);
4) Ask players with high salaries to cut their salaries drastically.
So far only the first point has been reached: Laporta sold 25% of Barcelona’s TV rights to Sixth Street for 25 years. For this, the club would have to get €667.5m (if not all at once), but for the next 25 years it will be left without a quarter of its revenue from TV rights, whose prices are increasing every season. Given this growth, it is almost guaranteed that Barcelona will lose hundreds of millions of euros in potential revenue over 25 years.
But Laporta felt it was more important to buy a few players right now than to suffer several years without major transfers and possibly titles, but to strengthen the club’s economy and leave hundreds of millions of potential in the treasury.
“The desperate club with 1.4 billion euros in debt is now selling its future revenue streams to spend money on players hoping it will pay off! It’s risky for such a giant,” said Gary Neville, famous football player and television expert, on this occasion.
The remaining three aspects of the plan were not executed very skillfully – especially the sale of the expensive de Jong, which has now become the club’s main task.
Barcelona owes the midfielder 20 million euros, but does not want to pay them and demands that the player forgive the debt and go to another team. This looks especially strange against the background of the huge transfer costs of the living legend of football Lewandowski, the 23-year-old best defender of Sevilla Jules Kunde, the talented winger Rafinha from the Premier League, Frank Kessier of AC Milan and the current Italian champion. Champions League champion with Chelsea Andreas Christensen.
Yes, Christensen and Kessier came in as free agents, but they still have high salaries and Barcelona paid more than 150m euros for the rest of the players. In addition, Blaugrana is reportedly planning to continue buying to strengthen the defence, and is ready to buy Bernardo Silva from Manchester City for around €100m.
No wonder De Jong refused to forgive the 20 million euro debt. To force the midfielder to leave, Barcelona has already gone to extreme measures.
According to The Athletic, on July 15, the club notified the player in writing that it had found a violation of the law when signing his final contract. Recall that in 2020, de Jong signed a new contract with the Barcelona administration, headed by Josep Bartomeu. The contract was extended for two years (from 2024 to 2026) and the payment of debts to the player was postponed for the last four years of the contract.
Now, the new leadership of Barcelona, led by President Laporta, claims that some violations were committed during the signing and threatens de Jong with a lawsuit and cancellation of the last contract if he does not agree to leave for good and forget about the debt.
However, it is still unknown which violations were committed. More than half a month has passed since the notification and de Jong still has no intention of leaving.
He’s also not afraid of a lawsuit because he can offer Barcelona huge paychecks in response and is warmly supported in the football community.
Barcelona disgraced their big names! De Jong should consider suing Barcelona and all players should support him,” said Harry Neville. – It is immoral and a violation for the club to spend a fortune on new players and not pay the full salaries of the contractors. The International Federation of Professional Footballers’ Associations (FIFPro) does its best to stop this type of bullying. He must do whatever comes his way.”
Barcelona is a commercial beast.
Ronald Vaterres, former Dutch and Manchester City goalkeeper, represents in my eyes everything that makes modern football so ugly,” he said. “The way they’re blackmailing Frankie right now is a clear example of all that. I hope he pushes his position and stays.”
“De Jong was cornered with a baton for agreeing to leave.
“It seems crazy to me that the players have to pay for the economic problems of the club,” said Evgeny Levchenko, head of the Dutch footballers’ association.
Lawyers are also on Jong’s side
Tony Roca, CEO of the Sports Law Institute (Sports Law Institute), said in an interview with the Catalan edition of Mundo Deportivo that de Jong “did not commit any crime when he extended his contract with Barça”. According to the lawyer, the club will not be able to hold the player responsible.
“The player was asked to help the club only at a critical moment and lower wages, which led to a logical demand for some kind of reward in return – for example, extending the contract for several years or increasing wages in subsequent years,” the expert said.
– This process will take years if Barcelona decides to go to court. By the time everything is decided, de Jong may already be gone. Threats to sue are more of a Barcelona negotiation technique than a genuine intent.
At the same time, a boomerang can fly into the club, because the lawsuit could damage Barcelona’s reputation. And there is always the threat of the FIFPro football association to condemn the club’s actions.”
In addition, Roca, who is ranked fourth in the most prestigious sports lawyers list by the Iberian Lawyer, said that even if some violations are detected while signing the contract, Jong will not be punished in any case.
“Only those who have the power to dispose of the property of others, namely Josep Bartomeu, the president of Barcelona at that time, and other members of the former board of directors will be held responsible for the possible illegality of the contract. Not a player by any means.
“The only reflection for De Jong will be the possible cancellation of the new contract,” he said.
In this case, the term of the contract will return to the previous one – until 2024, but the player will still remain at the club, and the debt of 20 million euros will not go anywhere.
Thus, with their threats Barcelona has so far only tarnished their reputation once again and de Jong is determined to cut the rest of his salary and all his loyalty to the team has vanished.
Interestingly, will the top players still rush to Barcelona when they see that even with the new leadership their problem-solving methods are not much improved and the high-paid players are ready to be kicked out the backdoor by threats?