Well, looks like you should have just sold Frenkie De Jong for €80M when you had the chance, Joan Laporta. With Inter Milan coming out of the Camp Nou with a 3-3 draw, Barcelona now face being knocked out of the Champions League group stages for a second straight year.
Ah, the Grim Reaper has finally come to collect his debt from Barcelona President Joan Laporta and his beloved FC Barcelona.
All of those expensive, high-profiled summer signings, such as Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, Franck Kessie, Andreas Christensen, Jules Kounde, Marcos Alonso, Hector Bellerin, and Ousmane Dembele (who was actually a resigning, but since his contract expired and he became a free agent for a brief time, I’m going to include him anyway), are now coming back to bite Barcelona where it hurts most. Their finances.
Everyone and their grandmother who even remotely follows European football, and the various leagues within it, knows about Barcelona and its crippling debt. We’ve all heard the sad story of how the former president, Josep Bartomeu, misused the club’s finances that not only lead to the untimely departures of club legends like Luis Suarez, Neymar, and Leo Messi, but also incurred an unprecedent debt of 1 billion euros.
But, through the ‘genius’ that is Joan Laporta, Barcelona solved their issues by selling off valuable club assets, such as Barca Studios, its La Liga TV broadcasting rights, and signed the world’s largest sponsorship deal with Spotify that gave the music streaming platform the right to plaster its name all over the player’s jerseys and the Camp Nou itself.
Or I guess I should say the Spotify Camp Nou. That’s what it’s called now, Barca fans. I hope it was all worth it.
Needless to say, Barcelona sold its soul to the Grim Reaper for the chance of a quick, short-term fix of both on-field and off-field performances. Though, do you want to know what has annoyed me the most from Laporta’s shameless sell offs and signings this summer? He was so arrogant about it.
Despite being in over €1B in debt, the Catalan giants were in for practically every ‘big-name’ player.
Laporta just had to have every player available on the transfer market, even if the Barcelona budget would suffer more than it already was. In Laporta’s eyes, ‘small clubs’ like Leeds United, Sevilla, and even Bayern Munich should just hand over their star players to the great, mighty Barca and accept their place in world football. As Barcelona’s lesser.
Oh, and don’t even mention selling players to free up capital to Laporta. Once a player has signed for Barcelona and can still perform at a high level, they’ll never leave as they belong to Barca. Don’t believe Laporta thinks like this? Just ask Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang how easy it was to leave Catalonia, even though he was desperate to leave.
Barcelona deserves the suffering and poor on-field performances for their own financial mismanagement, you say? How dare you! Barcelona is a ‘legacy team’ and deserve to play in the Champions League every year, no matter how dreadful the club is run by the hierarchy. Or so Laporta wants us all to believe.
You know, with this line of thinking, it doesn’t surprise me as to why Barcelona stayed in the European Super League for as long as they did. The club has allowed its greatness and confidence to be replaced by hubris and arrogance.
Anyway, all of this bluff and arrogance was predicated on the foolish belief that a team, which practically assembled in one summer transfer window, could achieve one important target…constant Champions League round qualification.
Yet, with their result today, they have virtually no chance of making to even the knockout round.
The hundreds of millions of euros that qualifying for the later rounds of the Champions League was not only vital in the Laporta ‘masterplan’ for getting Barcelona out of their financial ruin prematurely, but was also vital in getting Barcelona back to the top of European football.
It’s one thing to win La Liga against teams with even worse finances than Barca (except for Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, of course), but an entirely different entity when facing off against the powers of England, Germany, and Italy (oh, and PSG).
And this game proved it as Inter, who currently sit 7th in Serie A, nearly came out of Catalonia with a win.
If Inter could have held on for six minutes after Robin Gosens 89′ go-ahead goal, or their goalkeeper Andre Onana could have actually dived to save Robert Lewandoski’s first goal, or even have been able to capitalize on the Kristin Asllani chance just after Lewandowski scored his second of the game to tie it at 3, then they would have won this game and knocked Barcelona out of the Champions Lague after four matches.
Though, what does it matter? There’re all but through to the next round, which must be a relief for Simone Inzaghi to have something go right for him and his side this season.
But, as it stands, Barcelona still has a chance to make it through if they can beat both Bayern Munich and Viktoria Plzeň while also hoping that Inter Milan don’t pick up another three points. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely considering Milan faces bottom-feeders Plzeň next matchday.
Nevertheless, I, for one, will be extremely happy when Barcelona gets dragged back down into the Europa League for a second consecutive season. Hopefully, such humiliation and financial ruin will teach Joan Laporta an important lesson in humility, while also showing him and the Barcelona fanbase that financial rebuilds take time and need precision and care to overcome.
Selling the soul of Barcelona was not the way of restoring honor and glory to this once great club.
Oh, and as I Manchester United fan, don’t think that I have forgotten how Laporta, Barcelona, and Frenkie de Jong acted during that whole transfer debacle. Revenge really is a dish best served cold.
I guess we’ll be seeing United and Barcelona battle it out over the Europa League. And here I thought that Europa League teams were beneath you, Frenkie and Joan.
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