Carles Puyol’s tweet about Lionel Messi’s move calls for the ultimate revelation.
“Respect and admiration, Leo. All my support, my friend,” he wrote.
This is not the expected reaction of a former Barcelona captain, the team player, who officially asks to leave.
Puyol has not publicly explained his motives for the Argentine. But there are some clues as to why he might have edited his old friend.
It is known that the former central defender last year rejected an offer from the current president of the club, Josep Bartomeu, to the barcelona sporting director.
He then supported Bartomeu’s rival for the role; Victor Font, with elections scheduled for 2021.
Would Puyol possibly not be the one who lately controls the club, but approves of Messi’s request? It’s an indication that something’s really wrong.
His successor at the centre of the Blue-league defender, Gerrard Piqué, in his assessment of the team’s humiliating 8-2 in the Champions League, is left to Bayern Munich.
“The club wants change,” Piqué said, “structural, player or coach changes.”
Bartomeu categorically rejected this.
“There’s a sports crisis. We have a football crisis, not an institutional crisis or a crisis of style,” he said of Barcelona a few days after Piqué’s statements after the match.
He then allegedly put the four team members up for sale and replaced the manager.
And the answer to those sporting changes? The Barcelona player said he wanted to leave.
This war between replacement and structural replacement is intensified due to a dangerous monetary situation.
The way the club handles this can make the difference between good fortune and failure in the coming decades.
On the surface, the strength of Barcelona’s monetary scenario before the COVID-19 pandemic will be more than enough to deal with the effects of a global fitness crisis.
It first surpassed Deloitte’s Football Money League in 2020, the first club to break the $900 million profit mark.
However, Dr Daniel Plumley, a senior professor of sports finance at the University of Sheffield Hallam, explains that, precisely because of the club’s scale, the effect of coronavirus is more pronounced.
“They are still one of the clubs in the world. That’s why, however, the pandemic will hit them hard. Said.
It is estimated that it has already lost about 150 million euros ($178.3 million) since the start of the pandemic and the club’s museum, which generates about 50 million euros ($59.5 million) a year, has been closed since March. the Camp Nou does not fit the source of income and there are symptoms of economic concern.
The effect of this relief on revenue is in addition to the $830 million borrowed to renovate the Camp Nou stadium.
Also, crucially, the monetary burden of players’ wages has increased.
“They have one of the wage burdens in world football with an average annual salary of around 11 million euros ($13.1 million) consistent with the player, which makes their prices higher and puts pressure on profit generation,” Plumley continued.
“It’s a higher payroll than your nearest rivals. It accounts for 69% of sales. By comparison, Real Madrid accounts for only 52% of revenue.”
What makes this scenario worse is that the club has alienated many players who want to take it off the payroll.
A key moment in which lines of war were drawn between the organization’s game and its leadership occurred on social media before the pandemic.
Responding to senior director Eric Abidal wondering about the attitude of the players in the media, Messi spoke of the club’s control on his Instagram account.
“Technical managers will also have to assume the duty and, above all, the decisions they make.” Messi wrote in a scathing rebuttal to Abidal’s comments, pasted next to a screenshot of the interview that annoyed him.
Conflicting citations only worsened once the pandemic occurred.
Players were angered by the situations proposed by the club for a COVID-19-like pay cut and then felt they had scapegoats for other mistakes made through control in reaction to the virus.
Messi once was at the center of the discussion. His pronouncement of a 70% pay cut had an impact on the club.
“It helps to keep unexpected [players] that from inside the club there are other people who need to put us under a magnifying glass or check to force us to [receive a pay cut when it was] anything we’ve been.” we wanted to do,” he says.
This breakdown of the public’s trust, blatant in the words of the club’s captain, has left Barcelona with many disgruntled and well-paid players who desperately want to pull from the books.
This is compounded by the fact that many of those stars are in the twilight of their careers with little resale or incentive to move.
Clubs that face these players are unlikely to have to pay the same salary as Barca, especially since they will have lower incomes.
“Barcelona has a lot of the best income in the total team and some of them are now over 30 years old, so it becomes difficult to get them to move because they will have to settle for a pay cut,” Plumley said.
“It’s the high income of the team that wants to cut the most. And then, of course, there’s Messi’s situation.
The consequences of not cutting the payroll, according to Plumley, are serious. He believes the club may face monetary unrest and threats to violate monetary fair play regulations.
“It is estimated that incomes may fall by 30% due to the pandemic, so you will have to reduce prices accordingly. Players have already suffered a pay cut, but the club will likely seek to reduce players’ wages to counteract lost revenue.
The hope of Barcelona can be drawn from yours and that of Carles Puyol.
In 2003, Manchester United sought to keep the Barcelona legend away from their home club.
The culés came from the worst season in more than a decade, fourth year in a row a trophy and had burned three coaches in less than 12 months.
Barcelona’s revenues at the time were part of Manchester United’s and the debts of 150 million euros ($178.4 million) put him in a delicate position.
It is surreal, given the groups in which Puyol later played, that the Catalan defender was the club’s top asset at the time. His departure would have been catastrophic.
What happened next was extraordinary. Barcelona not only retained Puyol, but also surpassed United to bring one of the stars of the 2002 World Cup: Ronaldinho.
It is a massive threat posed by newly elected President Joan Laporta.
The Brazilian superstar is unreasonable at 21 million pounds, however, his acquisition proved to be the catalyst for enriching fortunes on and off the field.
Just three years after that crucial summer in 2003, Barcelona lifted the Champions League trophy for the moment in its history.
Laporta and his team of fresh football executives have also controlled to build their source of income and debt.
The club is in a much more powerful position now than in 2003, so who can say that no other return is expected.
In the face of all this, he must regain the confidence of his player, starting with Messi.
Currently, I am guilty of the content of Construction News, which specializes in research. I’ve done a lot of collaborations with the primary media. These come with a
Currently, I am guilty of the content of Construction News, which specializes in research. I’ve done a lot of collaborations with the primary media. These come with a presentation on covert slave paintings with the BBC, a Financial Times report that revealed a sex attack scandal and a foreign investigation into the death of staff at the world’s largest airport with Architects’ Journal.
My paintings were shortlisted for the Orwell Journalism Award in 2020 and I was a finalist at the 2019 British Journalism Awards. I was released as An International Building Press Journalist of the Year 2019 and awarded the IBP Scoop of the Year award and Writer of the Year in Construction / Infrastructure.
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