Lionel Messi has left Barcelona

[METALMAN]

1 hour ago, Arjen Robben said:

Looks weird.

he looks dead inside

[Arjen Robben]

The type of money Messi generates is probably the type of money a team in a financial black hole could have done without losing really.

[The Lusophone]

9 hours ago, Arjen Robben said:

The type of money Messi generates is probably the type of money a team in a financial black hole could have done without losing really.

30% of Barca's revenue - for the three seasons after he signed his new contract in 2017, he was paid 383,655,000 euros, but he generated 619,265,000 euros - that's a big profit for Barca to lose out on, one not easily replaced. Next highest paid Barca player is Griezmann (on 800k euros a week) and I'm pretty sure he does not generate Barca any profit at all.

[Baddar]

Seeing the fb/twitter experts saying Barca's financial problems are all down to Messi, and how he should just play for free etc. has been annoying.

The amount they pay the likes of Griezmann and Pjanic confirms there was never any real structure there.

[Matt]

He couldn't play for free if he wanted to. He's a free agent, they can't register anyone until they cut significantly more wages. Even if he hadn't let his contract expire before signing, the least he could've signed for would have been 50% under Spanish law.

 

Not to mention there's absolutely no reason he should play for free, he owes them fuck all.

[Gazz]

Even if he could play for free, Barca would still be over cap. He's left and they're still overbudget.

[The Kraig]

Are we potentially looking at Barca going into administration or something? There seems to be a huge black hole now.

[Malenko]

According to news reports. If Pjanic and Umtiti leave, they have enough margin to have Depay playing.

Aguero is injured so they won't do it yet, because it would just go against the cap and he wouldn't be able to play anyway. Eric Garcia and Emerson would be closer to the 31st as long as they're able to sell Braithwaite.

They seem to be confident all 3 are going to leave the club before the 31st so all new signings will be registered.

Some suggest big names like Piqué, Jordi Alba and Busquets should accept a paycut in case those (or any of those) don't work out in order to help the club.

 

[Arjen Robben]

I might just be not fully clued up on the rules or something, but why did Barcelona willingly just let Messi's contract run down knowing full well that he would be considered a new player if they agreed a new contract after that? Given that he clearly wanted to stay, why did they not try to extend his contract before it expired, they'd still be massively overspending, sure, but at least he'd be registered still.

Must leave such a bad taste that they just knowingly strung him along all summer like "yeah, yeah, no bother it's all in hand, everything's agreed, Messi will still be here, don't worry" only to pull the contract off the table at the last moment and finally be like "yeah, we can't, sorry". What a way to treat your greatest ever player.

[Malenko]

15 minutes ago, Arjen Robben said:

I might just be not fully clued up on the rules or something, but why did Barcelona willingly just let Messi's contract run down knowing full well that he would be considered a new player if they agreed a new contract after that? Given that he clearly wanted to stay, why did they not try to extend his contract before it expired, they'd still be massively overspending, sure, but at least he'd be registered still.

Must leave such a bad taste that they just knowingly strung him along all summer like "yeah, yeah, no bother it's all in hand, everything's agreed, Messi will still be here, don't worry" only to pull the contract off the table at the last moment and finally be like "yeah, we can't, sorry". What a way to treat your greatest ever player.

They did reach an agreement but he couldn't sign because the minimum they could give him would still be over the league's imposed salary cap.

[Arjen Robben]

Yeah, but that was after his contract had expired and he'd become a free agent. As far as I'm aware, the rule applies to new players rather than contract extensions. After that, the amount becomes irrelevant, he could accept a wage of £1 and they still wouldn't be able to register him because he would be considered a new player when they were already over the cap.

I'm saying why didn't they try to extend his contract much earlier, once Bartomeu was gone which seemed to be the crux of Messi's issues last year, and Laporta was in, you'd think that was the time to try to do it rather than let it lapse and complicate matters as it did. Pique, de Jong, Lenglet, and Ter Stegen all signed new deals in October, they hardly seem like pressing issues by comparison, and was one of the last acts by Bartomeu.

[Malenko]

 

1 hour ago, Arjen Robben said:

Yeah, but that was after his contract had expired and he'd become a free agent. As far as I'm aware, the rule applies to new players rather than contract extensions. After that, the amount becomes irrelevant, he could accept a wage of £1 and they still wouldn't be able to register him because he would be considered a new player when they were already over the cap.

I'm saying why didn't they try to extend his contract much earlier, once Bartomeu was gone which seemed to be the crux of Messi's issues last year, and Laporta was in, you'd think that was the time to try to do it rather than let it lapse and complicate matters as it did. Pique, de Jong, Lenglet, and Ter Stegen all signed new deals in October, they hardly seem like pressing issues by comparison, and was one of the last acts by Bartomeu.

 The salary cap doesn't apply to signings. It applies to your full squad. They call it "Coste de Plantilla" (Squad value/cost). This includes all players registered to play for them in La Liga. The registration part is key and is also the reason why they have a few new players under contract for the new season which would still get them above the salary cap but those don't matter at the moment because they aren't registered yet.

Basically when all those players you mentioned got contract extensions, the 2021/22 Coste de Plantilla still wasn't above what it needs to be because it didn't include Messi yet as he wasn't under contract for 2021/22. Besides, ter Stegen and de Jong (not sure about Lenglet) accepted paycuts so their "cost" will actually be below what it had been this season anyway.

Had they signed Messi - even at 50% of his original salary - they wouldn't be able to register quite a few of their squad next year because as has been mentioned before, he's not the only one being paid a noticeable percentage of the cap.

 

Why was he allowed to pay with such high wages last season then? La Liga's salary cap depends on how much you can get back. Barcelona's cap pre-Covid was higher than it is now, because they've had significantly lower revenue last season.

[gunnar hendershow]

So if I understand it right, like most caps, it's expected to increase every year? Because revenues theoretically keep increasing. But due to the large drop in revenues last season the cap plummeted and Barca had agreed upon wages with multiple players that would already put them over the cap once registered?

[Lineker]

It's all explained in one of the Tifo video I posted a week or so ago.

[Malenko]

25 minutes ago, damshow said:

So if I understand it right, like most caps, it's expected to increase every year? Because revenues theoretically keep increasing. But due to the large drop in revenues last season the cap plummeted and Barca had agreed upon wages with multiple players that would already put them over the cap once registered?

That's the thing. It doesn't necessarily increase every year, but the 2 massive clubs never had to worry with any of that because theirs did. Their revenues have assured them all their transfer market mistakes would never be too costly from a financial standpoint. I remember reading back in 2019 Barcelona topped all clubs in revenues but that was until the last couple of years where everything drastically changed.

[King Ellis]

17 hours ago, Lineker said:

 

Ah, the old North Korea tactic.

[OctoberRaven]

Maybe he just wanted to show his love for Nidorina?

[OctoberRaven]

[Colly]

Is it mean to point out that Germain doesn't rhyme with brain?

[Naitch]

Paris Saint-Germain Suplex would be an easy replacement though.