Barcelona is facing a colossal task of reducing their expenses by a minimum of €200 million in order to sign Lionel Messi and carry on with other operations. The club has presented its Viability Plan to La Liga and has divided the task into five different ways.
The plan includes reducing the salaries of the first-team players, reducing the costs of other sporting sections such as youth football, reducing the operating costs at the club, reducing the salaries of non-sporting entities, and finally, activating new sources of income.
According to journalist Toni Frieros writing for SPORT, Barcelona plans to lower the salary of the first team by €50-€60 million. All professional sections such as women’s football, roller hockey, basketball, handball and futsal will have to pull their hands in the operation. There will also be some cutting in youth football, which is La Masia, and this is estimated to save €30 million.
The recent announcement of the closure of Barça TV was done to lower the operation cost by another €30 million. However, as Frieros reports, this closure will represent about €12 million in savings.
As far as non-sporting entities are concerned, Barcelona is expecting savings of anywhere around €10 million. All departments of FC Barcelona are already affected by this ‘war economy’.
The most gruesome task that the team needs to carry forward is to generate new income. Out of the mentioned €200 million cap, Barcelona needs to raise an income of a minimum €70 million. This can either be done from new sponsorships or player sales.
The idea is to sell those who can churn in a large net profit. In that regard, the likes of Ansu Fati and Franck Kessie continue to top the list.
This is the Viability Plan that Barcelona has submitted to La Liga and these operations will be carried out over a period of two seasons, 2023-2024 and 2024-2025.
If all that is done, Barcelona can finally register Gavi and Ronald Araujo and Alejandro Balde can be handed a new contract while the club can also go about signing new players such as Messi.
