Not really. We at most won 3 titles on the bounce I believe. The PL was never as pointless at the top as this. Even in years where you've looked average, the others have failed to leverage the situation which shows how deep rooted issue now is. Many Bundesliga fans do recognise that it's an issue which is a positive.
Barcelona: Charged with corruption .... again!
- Thread starter The Boy
- Start date
Well... you literally sold 25% of the club to Adidas, Audi and Allianz to pay for the stadium.If it is what it takes to pay the debt, Barça could do the same tomorrow. I honestly don't discard a similar action in the future.
Debt is not necessarily bad. Life would be way harder without it. You only need to use it well, which Bartomeu didn't do. Bartomeu should have been in jail for years. It is not that he was a horrible president, he is a felon.
Anyway, the situation would be bad but not critical without Covid. I was expecting dark ages for Barça since late 2010's but Covid made it worse.
Barça will eventually come back, you like it or not
Bayern paid the whole stadium, they "only" had to sell 25% of the club.
Whilst I agree that money sadly rules in football now, I must say that using NBA as a comparison was a bit off. LeBron earns close to USD 40mill a year from Lakers alone and is a billionaire. Granted, there are less players on each team but the salaries in American sports are crazy in general. Atleast for an European looking in from the outside.
Tbf, there are only like 30 odd teams in each major sports league in North America. I am sure if the Super League had come to fruition, we would have similar increase in salaries for football players of those teams.
You did win 7 out of the first 9 titles since Sky got involved.
That's very Bayern like dominance. In that time you purchased the best players from the clubs around you; anyone that looked like they'd be remotely competitive - Cantona, Cole, Yorke etc. Nearly got Alan Shearer.
Blackburn and Newcastle outspent United in the mid 90s. It wasn't until 98/99 that United started to spend serious money, which is when we got Yorke.
Yes because Aston Villa were big threats to Man United in 1998
Do you even know what you're saying?You are misinformed. BM paid about 345 million bucks out of their own pocket (with normal financing through loans from banks, aimed at a 30 year payback plan, due to some fortune in the CL they paid it back after 9 1/2 years. No subsidising involved. It's all legit. Don't listen to the haters.
Besides, debt is a part of business. Barca's has gone out of control due to their inept previous regime but it's hardly as though business' don't leverage their brand value to get financed. At least they did it after dominating on the pitch. The problem is thay Bartrmeu and co were utterly incompetent
What is moronic is deflecting from Barca being ONE BILLION Euros in debt and still having a license to compete in any professional league. Is that somehow better because I'm a Bayern fan? Am I fecking wrong because of the club I support? I wonder who's moronic here... attack the post, not the poster.
If it is what it takes to pay the debt, Barça could do the same tomorrow. I honestly don't discard a similar action in the future.
Debt is not necessarily bad. Life would be way harder without it. You only need to use it well, which Bartomeu didn't do. Bartomeu should have been in jail for years. It is not that he was a horrible president, he is a felon.
Anyway, the situation would be bad but not critical without Covid. I was expecting dark ages for Barça since late 2010's but Covid made it worse.
Barça will eventually come back, you like it or not
Bayern paid the whole stadium, they "only" had to sell 25% of the club.
I'm sorry, in all the ramblings here... where is the bit that says "Yep, a BILLION EUROS in debt is probably a bit much, I totally hate my club's management for this and I totally agree that we don't deserve to play in professional football right now"?
Not going to hate on your club or explain to you how finances work, clearly you have no interest in a serious conversation. Do you really think it's wise to shit on other clubs cos they sell 25% off to big sponsors? How many of the PL top clubs are not owned by foreign money? Think about what you're saying and where you just posted...
BBB is a good rating. Even if they cannot get rid of Griezman and countinho, their contract runs out in few years. Madrid survived with barely any signings for two years, so can barcelona.
I think what he is trying to say is that if Barca sold 25% of the team to someone they could get out of this mess easily.
After the BBB rating it does not seem like the club is in as big financial crisis as the media made it out to be. They keep getting linked to players like Romero.They have salary cap issues due to the loss of income because of COVID but all the big contracts will expire in 2 years or so.
They should do the same thing as Madrid. Don't sign anyone for two years. Unlike Madrid, Barca has very good assets. De jong, Pedri and Fati have pontetial to be the best in the world.
I think what he is trying to say is that if Barca sold 25% of the team to someone they could get out of this mess easily.
After the BBB rating it does not seem like the club is in as big financial crisis as the media made it out to be. They keep getting linked to players like Romero.They have salary cap issues due to the loss of income because of COVID but all the big contracts will expire in 2 years or so.
They should do the same thing as Madrid. Don't sign anyone for two years. Unlike Madrid, Barca has very good assets. De jong, Pedri and Fati have pontetial to be the best in the world.
Yorke was one of the best players in the league and had finished 2nd, 4th and 5th in some of those seasons prior to his move (not the 3 seasons directly, but in that early PL era).Yes because Aston Villa were big threats to Man United in 1998
Leeds were reigning champions when you bought Cantona and he was clearly one of the league's best players.
The Newcastle of the early-mid 90s wasn't the Newcastle of today and Andy Cole had completed a 42 goal season before he signed.
So yeah, you did sign the league's more talented players and not from tiny clubs.
This is a fair point, they were indeed big spenders. Not sure I remember them being bigger spenders than Man Utd but if so fair enough.
If we take 92 to 2000 (the 90's) United were the biggest spenders in 98/99 only.
Blackburn outspent everyone in 92/93 and 93/94. Everton were the biggest spenders in 94/95. Newcastle in 95/96 and 96/97 and 97/98. Then us in 98/99 and then Liverpool in 99/00.
We then were the biggest spenders in 00/01 and 01/02 and 02/03, then Chelsea came into money and outspent everyone in 03/04, 04/05, 05/06 and 06/07. Chelsea didn't just outspend everyone, they blew everyone out of the water. Spending went from 58m by United in 01/02 to 121m by Chelsea in 03/04. Unheard-of numbers.
The rest of it is:
07/08 Liverpool
08/09 City
09/10 City
10/11 City
11/12 Chelsea
12/13 Chelsea
13/14 Spurs
14/15 Utd
15/16 City
16/17 City
17/18 City
18/19 Liverpool
19/20 Utd
20/21 Chelsea
Have Utd spent money? Absolutely. Is it total outspending dominance? Not by a long shot.
Isn't 18/19 when we sold Coutinho for a ridiculous fortune?
Ha ha ha net spend.
Arsenal at their plomp would have never sold us Henry. We stopped a squad player from going to Liverpool (Heinze). We could buy the best players in the league but not from direct competition.
What's the source for this? I remember seeing united being out spent in the 90s but couldn't remember where.
In fact what I remember was
80s everton
90s blackburn or Newcastle (can't remember)
00s chelsea
10s City
Not true. There was a period of time during our dominance that you could argue that none of our players would get into a league 11 and we couldn't sign most of those who did.
The only thing we had in common was success.
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Yes you are wrong to cry about things not being competitive because your team plays in a league that isn't competitive. As for Barcelona, they've been very poorly run over the last 3-5 years, however, I don't think casual fans like you can draw the line on who should 'have the license' to play in a professional league. As much as I have disliked Barcelona and Madrid at various times, they are an enormous part of the beautiful game and two of the greatest and most iconic clubs of the sport. So football is better off with them. Same with Liverpool for that matter - although we can all agree that they're giant turds at the same time.
Lots of Barcelona fans feel agree with the first two. It's senseless to think that any fan will believe the last bit about their club.
I didn't want to use those complicated words as I know I'm on Redcafe so have to cater for the level of audience.
Bayern Munich paid the stadium by selling 25% of the team to big corporations!!! where do you think the money came from? hahaha.
If Barça sells 25% of the club we could pay all the debt tomorrow.
Again, debt is not bad. Debt is the most common instrument for business and people to grow. You can compete if you don't break the rules. What rules is Barça breaking? Barça issues are more related to LaLiga rules (salaries as a % of revenues) than money itself. The Covid sank Barça revenues over 300M euros. The salary cap from LaLiga changed dramatically. The salaries were too high but payable. It doesn't matter if we can pay them now because we have a rock solid salary cap from LaLiga that we need to respect.
Also, a big chunk of Barça's debt is also related to the stadium and other facilities, the "Spai Barça". It is around 700M euros. So, again... we could sell the club and pay for the stadium and facilities upgrades and pay the debt.
It is laughable to say that you are great because you sell your club to pay for the stadium and other clubs try to avoid and pay the debt by themselves. You exchanged 25% of the club for a stadium. Barça wants to pay the debt by itself and don't sell anything (at least for now). That debt is the majority of the 1B you are talking about.
Sorry, but Barca's debt is more like €1.3bn and they had over €700m in short term loans prior to the €525m loan. That means the majority of their debt isn't to do with the stadium.
Furthermore they're wage bill is now around 110% of income. Barca are pretty much broke. Only thing keeping their heads above water now is the brand name.
It was roughly 1bn weeks ago (it is true that they said it could increase).
Income decreased >35% due to covid. I already told that the wages were too high but payable until covid came. only issue was basically no/cheap signings for a while, which is fair enough for me. we had a felon as a president (he should be in jail) too many years and you have to pay for your mistakes. covid converted a bad situation in a very bad situation and laliga rules are making it even worse. laliga fair play rules are enforced, not like uefa's.
anyway, a lot of people are salivating with Barça going bankrupt and dissapearing, but worst case scenario is Barça being sold to corporations (like bayern sold 25% of itself to pay the stadium, although i think those companies were originally from baviera) or letting a billionaire with 0 ties to the team to buy it, like... i don't know... psg, city, chelsea, united, tottenham... and dozens and dozens in europe.
it would kill the personality of the club and a lot of people would be very frustrated, but we are in 2021. some of those teams burnt hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions (aside from false contracts, etc.) and they didn't have any history, supporters or a decent squad. barça would sell fast. very few clubs are still 100% owned by the fans, and barça is (still) one of them. barça football team also subsidized a lot of sports like basketball, handball, hockey, futsal, volleyball, track and field, etc. that is the origin of "mes que un club". people are also worried that if the club stops being owned by the fans the new owner would kill them because they are dead money.
i've been always surprised that english fans are so proud of their teams yet most of them are owned by billionaires that could have bought their biggest rival and they wouldn't mind. most teams are private in spain too, but i think people are not so reliant of their local teams and they are still usually owned by local businessmen.
But, the key of our success came from within, Fergie having the nous to promote a bunch of kids with Beckham, Scholes, nevilles, brown, O’Shea, Giggs, butt and investing a relatively small amount of money on cantona, keane, Schmeichel. We were not the corporate bully you suggest
I think most fans would love to have the ownership model of Barca, I know I would.
However, this isn't the issue on this thread. The issue at hand is Barca's financial state. In January Barca admitted to €1.2bn in liabilities and that will have increased since then. €1.3bn as of now is probably an underestimation as they are so dependent on people attending games, visiting the museum and they went out of the CL early. This is before we even get to the €525m loan which we know wasn't entirely to do with debt management as that was needed, in part, to pay wages.
As for how they can pay for this, it is starting to become very questionable. Barca seem to be banking on:
1) People coming back in the same numbers as before.
2) Being able to get Messi's contract past La Liga. This seems like quite a task as they need to shed €200m from the wage bill and no one wants their players due to their wages. Of course some can go on loan, but Barca are going to have to eat some of their wages which means they cannot get enough of the €200m off the books doing this alone. If Messi doesn't re-sign, then things will be even more bleak if the sponsorship percentages tied to him is true.
3) They seem to bank on being able to keep all their best young players; De Jong, Pedri etc, however these players are the ones that they could sell to raise enough cash. However, if they sell them then they won't have anything to build on.
4) They are banking on their current squad taking massive wage cuts to help them out. The players have legally binding contracts so they require a lot of goodwill on the players' part. Personally, I do not see many of them doing it as they won't ever get such money again.
That is a lot of ifs and buts. Personally, I do not see how they shift enough cash off the books to re-sign Messi unless they sell a De Jong/Pedri etc. If they don't re-sign Messi, then I dread to think what their wage bill cap will be if the rumours are true.
Additionally, you stated that Barca's debt is principally due to the stadium regeneration. However, that is not true, as that debt would've been tied up in long term loans. Thus, by having €700m+ out of €1.2bn in short term loans it tells us that the majority of their debt isn't actually to do with the stadium.
Some mental gymnastics by Barca fans here. Coulda woulda shoulda... in reality you're 1.3 Bln Euros in debt and can't register new players. On and on we go.
For a club that are actively trying to give away some of their players due to poverty, Barca sure are being linked to a lot of players by journos who really ought to log on to the World Wide Web once in a while just to check in.
I like how Barca fans blame their former president, omitting the fact they voted the muppet in.
Leopards ate my face or something...
Leopards ate my face or something...
He won a treble but his insane spending didn’t happen until two years into his tenure where he went AWOL
They voted him in because he was seen as more financially prudent than Laporta and wouldn't use the club to push his political agenda...
You can't make this up
Barcelona fans voted Bartomeu in as president two months after the club won a treble. No club in the world would have voted out a guy who just won a treble.
Generally speaking, the value of a business is the sum of its future profits. Barca right now isn't profitable. Part of it is due to Covid but your club really has maneuvered itself in an unhealthy position by offering these crazy contracts to players like Griezmann, Coutinho, Dembele, etc. Your wage bill makes up far too big of a proportion of your revenue, even before covid began. Many people already argued that you overstrained your financial muscle when you loaned money to sign Griezmann. This is not the most attractive perspective for potential investors. It will take years to lower the wage level again.
That being said, I feel that we are lacking some important information. Barca sure seems rather relaxed given how dark the reports on their financial situation are. It doesn't seem as if they see themselves in an existential crisis. If they did, they wouldn't have signed Diaz, Depay and Aguero and they would have accepted paying part of the salaries of players like Griezmann to get them off the books.
I don't know what they're banking on but something seems to be there. The alternative is that they're just incredibly arrogant and ignorant to their situation - hard to believe but not completely unimaginable to be fair.
You said it... "right now". When we get back normal we will make money. We lost 300M due to covid, I don't know if we will get back 50 or 250, but it is going to be positive.
Besides, the costs (salaries) are basically over in 2 years, so it is just a matter of time (and it is not a decade) to be profitable again. I didn't like Bartomeu way before the treble, and I would not have voted after it. I know that it is difficult to demonstrate but that was always my opinion. The management has been poor since ~2012. Every year we had a worse squad.
Barça problems are more related to LaLiga fair play rules, which you need to respect, not like with UEFA (cough cough) than economic (from a survival perspective). The debt can be paid although it will obviously affect the quality of the team (i don't expect big signings for the years to come), but the biggest problem today is to be able to enroll the players, and it means cut 50% of the salaries this very year. Hopefully some will leave, others will renew and extend their contracts... it will be handled in a case by case basis. Hopefully we have a solution. August 13rd is the key date. I also expect that we will not be able to enroll some players for date 1... we will see.
I haven't seen a single rumor for weeks. Only some swap deals where we get a worse player and ridiculous/none cash involved.
I like how United fans blame their current owner, omitting the fact they didn't buy any share (and if you did, you can vote for things).
Probably the worst reasoning ever.
You might think that only a small part of the fans can vote, that you might have voted for a different candidate, that the president didn't follow what he told he was going to do, etc. I guess you cannot criticize any decision your government/city council/organization made because... you voted!!!
Sorry, the money lost from Covid isn't coming back. Barca's projections for income are approx €1bn a year. Last year you ranked in €600m (approx.) Therefore, if your revenue next year hits €1bn, you have just covered what you have supposed to. To 'gain' the lost revenue Barca would have to generate €1.4bn (approx.) That isn't going to happen. In fact you're likely to miss the €1bn again, as that was an ambitions target to begin with. Additionally, if you do miss the €1bn again, you're probably going to have to take yet another loan to cover costs. Hence, why La Liga want you to lose that €200m asap as their cap is to save clubs going broke.
Not sure how the club can be profitable in the short to mid term for the following reasons:
1) A lot of Barca's assets are tied up in players contracts. Thus, they have €60m (approx) on the books for Greizmann, however that asset (the contract) decreases by a fifth every year he continues to play for you. Additionally, the book value is not representative of real world value; as you cannot actually sell him for anything like €60m owing to his wages. This use of book value is why you did the Pjanic/Arthur swap and why you have only been buying 'free' signings as that way you can load the book value with their hypothetical transfer value.
2) Your total debt figure isn't going anywhere fast. Let's say the average percentage you pay on all your loans is 3% (incredibly unlikely for a BBB- rated bond, which is typically 5%+.) Your debt currently stands at €1.3bn (approx.) That means you have to pay €39m in interest per year. That interest payment does not cover any of the underlying debt. Therefore, even if you pay €100m a year next year, that would mean your total debt the following year would be €1.239bn still. Remember these figures are based on a incredibly low 3% figure. If it is 5% (still low for a BBB- product) then your interest alone will be €65m.
3) The age demographics of your side are bottom and top heavy. By this, I mean you have a lot of young and old players, with very few peak players. This consequently means you have a lot of Greizmann type assets where the book value is entirely detached to what you could raise in the real world, whilst you young players, if sold, will not realise the value that they could be worth to you in 3-5 years time. A dangerous mix.
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If it is what it takes to pay the debt, Barça could do the same tomorrow. I honestly don't discard a similar action in the future.
Debt is not necessarily bad. Life would be way harder without it. You only need to use it well, which Bartomeu didn't do. Bartomeu should have been in jail for years. It is not that he was a horrible president, he is a felon.
Anyway, the situation would be bad but not critical without Covid. I was expecting dark ages for Barça since late 2010's but Covid made it worse.
Barça will eventually come back, you like it or not
Bayern paid the whole stadium, they "only" had to sell 25% of the club.
Ive been in both situations and I can categorically say being debt free is a lot, lot better.
Sunderland...
The only solution left for Barca is to not register players like Pjanic etc. There's no market for older players on ridiculous wages who didn't perform in last 12-24 months and I guess sending them on loan somewhere and then pay 60-70% of their wages won't solve anything.
They're legit bragging about a BBB- rating hoping their moronic fans lack the intelligence to google and find out its one of the worst ratings you could possibly get (where people will still loan you money) and usually the types of people who will loan you money on at that rating want either insane interest, or are people you dont want to deal with. And thats provided that Barcelona haven't paid back doors to ratings agency (which fyi, every body does) so they're probably not even BBB- level. They just paid for what ever rating they could get to get financial institutions to loan them money.
Im pretty certain they're arrogant to shit.
The company usually pays for the rating, yes. That is common practice and an obvious problem without a good solution. But you don’t pay x to get rating y.
ESMA is very(!!) strict when it comes to the process of producing a credit rating. The agency would be absolutely fecked if it came out.
However, a BBB- can be interpreted as „you kinda suck, get your affairs in order and we‘ll reassess in 12 months“.
As somebody involved in the legal field… I got some news for you…