BARCELONA – Barcelona for the 2021-22 season is starting to take shape with the meeting that Joan Laporta and Ronald Koeman have to hold this week.
After the first contact between the new president and the Dutch coach during the trip to Paris, Koeman announced on Saturday his intention to meet the manager who will take advantage of the League hiatus to plan the sporting future of his team and in this meeting , sources of the entity recognized to ESPN Deportes, will begin to purify the future of several Barça footballers.
The new directive begins to understand the financial reality of the club after the transfer of powers where the manager has handed over all kinds of documentation confirming the delicate economic situation and the difficulty of strengthening the selection of the first team, a scenario that is not largely is unknown to the coach and that motivates that the intention to go to the transfer market is inevitably determined by a reduction in the salary mass of the first team that has to go through the departure of several players.
“The salary bill is almost 90 percent of the club’s budget, UEFA recommends cutting it below 70 and the ideal would be 50 percent,” announced Carles Tusquets, former Chairman of the Board of Directors. , publicly of the difficulties the new Barça leadership will face in achieving its goals. And that it will force from the start to negotiate and accept the losses that Koeman may consider.
Barça needs money for transfers as well as savings in salaries and the names of Coutinho, Umtiti, Neto, Junior Firpo, Braithwaite and Pjanic are indisputably on the podium … Despite the fact that some signings are not written off. The ‘Exhausts before entry’ maxim is more evident than ever and as the cases of Neto or Junior Firpo, willing to negotiate a transfer, is understood less problematically, it doesn’t happen that way with Coutinho, Umtiti and Pjanic. Especially with the last two.
With a transfer fee of 145 million in January 2018, almost 60 to be written off and more than 40 in salary (gross) for the two remaining seasons of his contract, the case of Coutinho, who is injured today, raises no doubts. the leaders. .
As happened with Riquelme in 2003, the Brazilian has not adapted to Barcelona and it is considered important to find a way out as he has a market in the Premier, adjusting the numbers to the maximum and risking a minimal accounting loss if he could. traded for less than that 60 million with the obvious savings it would mean to his salary.
Samuel Umtiti has been completely written off in terms of signing (25 million euros was paid for him to Olympique Lyon in the summer of 2016), but the main problem is his fame, more than 15 million euros per year, and the two remaining seasons of his contract. Saving those 30 million total salaries is considered transcendent, so a cheap transfer is the ideal scenario … Provided the player gave his approval to a club that kept him, or close to the emoluments he has in Barcelona.
It is less easy to find a way out for Martin Braithwaite, under contract until 2024, with a pending write-off of around 10 million euros at the end of this season and as unfavorable to accept his departure as difficult to place in a transfers that do not cause accounting losses.
PJANIC … AND GRIEZMANN
Just as much or more difficult is the case of Miralem Pjanic, who has a three-season contract without going into the coach’s plans, has 45 million euros to write off and a transfer on which almost no agreement can be reached. The Bosnian midfielder’s departure could be facilitated by a transfer to the image and likeness of what happened to Coutinho last year, with the destination club taking over a salary of nearly 9 million euros.
And no less simple is the situation of Antoine Griezmann, who does not consider any way out, whose figure is so recognized and questioned in equal parts in the club and whose future ventures will be the subject of discussion until the end of the season. For the former Atlético player, there will be about $ 70 million in write-offs on the transfer, but if that weren’t an unattainable figure for some clubs who wanted him, then adding the nearly 30 it costs to gross salary annually would increase the make operation utopian. Or almost.
RENEWAL OR SALE
Being as Lionel Messi is the philosopher’s stone of the project, trusting Laporta to begin his renewal approval by becoming the only first-team player to end the contract this season with Òscar Mingueza (whom he negotiates with). sports plot must come in to assess the future of the three players who will finish it in 2022. The three (Sergi Roberto, Ousmane Dembélé and Ilaix Moriba) basically go into the plans of the club (the latter is indisputable) but while he trusts with Sergi Roberto In a pact without many setbacks, with Dembélé the situation is not at all clear .
Enjoying his best moment since joining Barça, the relationship between Dembele and the club has not been idyllic in recent years and Laporta faces a renovation in which the economic issue will have transcendental weight. With a salary of around 20 million euros, the club deems a reduction necessary that they do not know how far the player will accept, so if an agreement is not reached, the door to a transfer will not close, especially considering that Due for his youth and quality could mean a good economic injection for Dembele, despite the risk of letting go.
SIGNATURES ON HOLD
With all those conditions that Laporta’s board of directors has on the table that Koeman takes into account, the signings that Barcelona can conduct would be on hold from the start. Eric García, Memphis Depay, Georginio Wijnaldum, Emerson and Erling Haaland are the names with more or less importance on the table and with whom a decision must be made. Haaland, it is no secret, it is the most coveted name and the most difficult to perform. Its arrival would represent an investment of more than 120 million euros (salary not included) and to specify that, in addition to the extremely painstaking management, it should have the inevitable counterpart of emptying lockers in the locker room.
However, being the number one target on the list, he understands the need to include a striker with a goal, and Barcelona is working with other options, such as Swedish Aleksander Isak, of Real Sociedad, whose signing wouldn’t stand a chance. car, or veteran Sergio Agüero, who terminated his contract with Manchester City, was already offered to Laporta during the elections, but is not unanimous at the Camp Nou.
Depay and Wijnaldum, who would come up with the release letter, have the explicit favor of Ronald Koeman, but while that of the Olympique Lyon forward remains achievable, there is not much certainty with the Liverpool midfielder at all. On Sunday from Barcelona, information was denied indicating an agreement between the club and the player’s representative and at Camp Nou his signing aroused sufficient concern, knowing that this would diminish the growth of the quarry’s youth, beyond Ilaix Moriba .
At Emerson, the situation is not that defined. Barça, who bought him half for 12 million euros with Betis in 2019, has the option to take over all his rights for 6 million euros at the end of this season, but has not decided whether that purchase would be for the Brazilian side. to be included in the squad or for a later transfer for a higher grade, knowing that it will spark interest in Italian football.
As for Eric García, who at the end of this season had taken for granted that he was signing with Manchester City free of charge at the end of this season, Barça remains absolutely silent, despite speculation this week about a deviation from positions with their representatives.