Barcelona President Joan Laporta: ‘In the summer we will reduce the wage bill by €170m’
Barcelona President Joan Laporta has claimed that changing La Liga rules are kneecapping the club when it comes to transfer business.
The Blaugrana sold off €667m of assets in the summer in order to allow them to spend on transfers in the summer, but being tight up against the salary limit again, it has prevented them from registering new contracts.
During a press conference, covered by MD, President Joan Laporta has explained that Barcelona are set to slash their wage bill this summer.
“We all know that LaLiga sets limits based on their accounts. At FC Barcelona we inherited an exceeded salary limit. There was an excess of €300-350m that made sports management difficult for us.”
“I will never stop praising the work of Mateu Alemany and the football management. We pulled the levers to have a competitive team. In the summer we will reduce the wage bill by €170 million. Since we came in we have bought for a value of €215m and sold for €141m. As we continue to exceed the salary limit, it causes LaLiga to apply more restrictive rules.”
However he blames La Liga for the difficulties Barcelona are currently having, in the latest battle between La Liga and Barcelona, headed by Presidents Laporta and Javier Tebas.
“We have managed to register players with a titanic effort, but LaLiga has changed the rules so that we cannot carry out this type of operation. It is a constant tug of war that complicates our planning process. We will continue working with skill to be able to register and we will try to convince LaLiga to make the rules more flexible, which prevent us from being competitive with the rivals that we have. In other countries, ‘fair play’ is more flexible.”
Tebas has commented in recent weeks that Barcelona will need to reduce their wage bill by around €200m this summer in order to avoid restrictions. That would thus require Barcelona to make a sale of €20-30m, depending on the salary of the player, before July in order to comply with La Liga rules.
