DBasia.news – Barcelona’s financial crisis is not over yet. As a result, the club’s salary bill is very limited, only one-eighth of that of Real Madrid!
The coronavirus pandemic has forced LaLiga as the competition authority to apply salary cap rules. This is done to keep the club’s finances healthy and prevent bankruptcy.
One of those affected is Barcelona. The Catalan giants have debts of more than 1 billion euros and are struggling to repay as the club’s income has been dragging on.
As a result, Barcelona also failed to bring in top players this summer and even had to lose Lionel Messi, as well as cut the salaries of senior players. Barcelona recorded a loss of about 481 million euros earlier this year, missing 200 million euros from the initial estimate of auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Therefore, LaLiga has again lowered Barcelona’s salary cap to only 97 million euros, or around Rp. 1.6 trillion for a season. This is why they also let go of Miralem Pjanic and Antoine Griezmann last summer, who have huge salary bills.
Whereas last season, Barcelona still had a salary limit of around 382 million euros or around Rp. 6.3 trillion. Before the pandemic, Barcelona became a team with a total salary cap of around 600 million euros or around Rp. 9.9 trillion.
Now the status of the highest salary cap belongs to their rival, Real Madrid, at 739 million euros or Rp. 12.2 trillion! That amount is almost eight times more than Barcelona’s salary cap this season.
It is understadble that Real Madrid had been speculated to bring in Kylian Mbappe last summer and were ready to spend 200 million euros, but Paris Saint-Germain still refused.
Whereas last season Real Madrid had a salary cap of less than 500 million euros. This is all because Madrid were able to release several players, either for a transfer fee or for free.
Plus Madrid did not spend any money at all in the transfer market for the 2020/2021 season. Ironically, Barcelona’s salary cap is only the seventh highest in the Spanish League, still losing to Villarreal and Real Sociedad.
Valencia is the team with the lowest salary cap of 30.98 million euros due to their financial condition. Whereas the previous season the Black Bat team had a limit of 103.9 million euros.
“They know that their total loss is much larger than expected, so that has had a huge impact on their spending limits,” said LaLiga corporate director Jose Guerra at ESPN.
“Just calculate it, if the limit is 97 million euros and we add the omitted figure again, around 480 million euros, then their salary bill normally reaches 570 million euros. So now it can be more stable,” he continued.