For months, Barcelona has been executing a viable monetary plan to sign Lionel Messi. The club, which would have had to lose almost 200 million euros (£176 million/$220 million) before it can take monetary action this summer, has reportedly come to find a silver bullet to circumvent La Liga’s strict currency regulations and bring in his club legend. Back home.
The most productive monetary minds the club can muster combined and decided, shrewd enough, that they would simply agree to reduce prices over a three-year period, by phasing out wages or engaging in other movements to increase the budget. Needed immediately. In return, the club told La Liga they were looking to sign Messi immediately.
The league, after a few weeks of negotiations, categorically rejected Barcelona’s plan.
Thus, the Blaugrana are stuck again. Last summer, the club’s president, Joan Laporta, activated a series of economic levers to cut prices and lose monetary flexibility. He auctioned one set of TV rights, beat another, sold nearly 50% of the club’s sales rights and encouraged several senior players to postpone or forgo much of their salary.
It worked quite a bit, at least enough for the club to float first and then bring in a crowd of summer signings.
But now they have their eyes on another, a possible arrival that will require more effort than the fragile plan formed through the confidence of Barcelona’s brain.
And the conditions, reconstructed, make Messi’s return to his boyhood club seem incredibly unlikely, with economic barriers preventing the Argentine from returning to the Catalan swan song.