For most of this year, Barcelona have flipped between their past and their future without ever really occupying the present. President Joan Laporta blamed his predecessor Josep Maria Bartomeu for the gross waste he inherited and offered, as a solution, the sale of the club’s future. Disposable income appeared at the perfect time, like a Monopoly player happily writing IOU notes.
Cashing in 25% of their national television rights for the next 25 years to an American investment company raised more than 500 million euros. Fifty percent of the club’s digital content arm, Barca Studios, has also been sold. A salary cap that stood at -144 million euros magically rose to 600 million euros. If these numbers look like they could be replaced with hieroglyphs and mean pretty much the same thing, welcome aboard.
And if you’re struggling to understand how Barcelona atone for this abdication of their longevity, join the queue. They already have the fourth highest annual income in world football. If there were easy ways to increase match or broadcast revenue, they would have exploited it. The only obvious growth potential is in their digital reach – which is the part of the business they sold.
Xavi has been allowed to sign a large number of players so far: Raphinha, Franck Kessie, Andreas Christensen and Hector Bellerin are all between 25 and 27; Marcos Alonso and Robert Lewandowski are both kicking the fall of their careers. The vague goal, presumably, is to use instant success as evidence of gross health. “How can we have problems, financial or otherwise? Have you got seen league table? »
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Domestically, Barcelona have started the season with flying colors, winning six and drawing their first seven matches. Still, they’ve only faced one team currently in La Liga’s top six and will travel to the Bernabeu next week. In the Champions League, there was a familiar discouragement: Xavi’s side were beaten by Bayern Munich and Inter without scoring. They will have to beat Inter at home next Wednesday and hope for more results to go their way.
A strategy is better than no strategy, but that sounds like short-termism on an industrial scale. In August 2020, Barcelona lost 8-2 to Bayern Munich in what felt less like a Champions League exit and more like the excoriation of a club’s identity in real time. The starting XI had an average age of 30. The head coach [Quique Setien] was unsuitable for its purpose. Their rivals inside and out had more money and more common sense.
Barcelona had two choices and only one seemed reasonable. They have to swallow their pride and some of their financial damage. They need to reinvigorate La Masia, which had been overtaken by smarter academies with less emotional baggage.
They could use their bottom view to recreate a better version of themselves. Or they could continue chasing an impossible dream and become Schrödinger’s football club. You can never be broke if you refuse to perform an inspection.
Ultimately, it’s all built on fresh air and hype, a call to arms to all Culers that if they believe it’ll be all right in the end, wishing hard enough will. We are Barcelona and this heritage must count for something, right? And in trying to fulfill a big self-created expectation of what people expect, Barcelona have somehow strayed from their identity more than we feared.
Over the next week they will make a career in their own present, two games that could decide a season and one season that could decide their future.
