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After losing two back-to-back matches across all competitions, Barcelona finally bounced back with their 1-0 first leg win against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu in the Copa del Rey 2023 semifinal on Thursday night. However, the Catalan giants are still facing financial issues regarding their players' transfers.
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The current La Liga toppers have to raise £178million from selling players or lowering their wages, in order to become eligible for signing new players in the summer transfer window.
On Thursday, while speaking at the Financial Times' Business of Football summit, La Liga chief Javier Tebas said, "As of today, Barcelona doesn’t have any room in its budget to spend in the upcoming transfer window. Barcelona has been involved in questionable behaviour which has had an impact on LaLiga and we are acting accordingly. We have ruled that they can no longer sign more players."
The Blaugrana signed the likes of Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha and Jules Kounde among others in the 2022 summer as they had to trigger several economic levelers, including their TV rights and selling some part of their shares. However, the club is reportedly still in debt and require to offload some stars to enter the transfer market.
Tebas continued, "They sold off £620m (€700m) in TV rights and tried to find different ways to solve the situation but they won't be able to do that next season. We have strict economic controls. At the end of each window, we tell all the clubs in LaLiga what they can spend."
"In the case of Barcelona, they have to drop from spending on wages and transfers from £532m to £399m, so it’s a budget of minus £177m. They have to reduce their investment in players and we have encouraged them to sell players because, for every amount they raise in sales, they can spend 40 per cent of that," he concluded.
Meanwhile, Barcelona are scheduled to face Valencia at the Camp Nou on Sunday, March 5 in La Liga 2022-23 before hosting Real Madrid twice in the league on March 19, and in Copa del Rey semifinal second leg on April 5, 2023.
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