This La Liga rule made Leo Messi to leave Barcelona in tears
Lionel Messi has left Barcelona after almost 17 years of incredible run with the club. He burst into tears during the press conference in which he expressed his feelings.
The 34 year old explained the cause of the incident which made him leave the Camp Nou. He told that the problem was with the new La Liga rules and regulations.
This article will explain you about the rules that every Spanish club must follow.
La Liga Rules and Regulations (Problem with Barcelona)
- La Liga has a fixed salary cap limit which every club needs to follow for financial fair play (FFP).
- Salary Cap is the maximum amount that a club can spend on the salaries of players, coaches, trainers registered with the first team.
- Compared to last year, the salary cap for the top 3 clubs Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid has been reduced by almost 50%.
- Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Barca suffered a weak financial situation. The gate receipts has seen a heavy hit on club and league’s revenue.
- Before the start of the season, the wage cap limit was fixed at 2.33 billion euros which was already 610 million euros less than the last year.
- However, due to the need for more readjustments, the 2.33 figure had to be reduced more which now stands at 2.24 billion euros.
- La Liga had planned on bringing fans back to the stadiums but the plan did not go through. This resulted in no reduced debt for the clubs and increased financial problems.
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The president of La Liga, Javier Tebas, had said that Barcelona would need to waive off 200 million euros of their salary cap from last season to register new players. It also included Messi since he was a free agent.
Barca already suffered a loss of around 580 million euros since last season. They needed to reduce their wage bill from 387 billion euros to around 145-150 billion euros.
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Joan Laporta had been trying to reduce to salary cap through any way possible. He came with the idea of reducing the salaries and asking players to take more wage cuts.
Antoine Griezmann, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets are some of the top earners at the club who were asked to reduce their salaries. Messi also agreed to take a 50% wage cut to re-sign.
Apart from this issue, Barcelona’s squad size was bigger than 25. They had to limit the players and looked for possible way-outs for players such as Samuel Umtiti, Philippe Coutinho, Trincao, and Pjanic.
However, the club failed in doing so as the players did not want to quit and the right price never arrived. All these meant, the registration of new signings such as Sergio Aguero, Memphis Depay, and Eric Garcia needed to be stalled.
Messi was ready to sign a new contract and the negotiations went perfect until La Liga communicated to Barcelona that registering the player will not be possible.
Barca is in deep financial troubles with a debt of over a billion. So they had to stop the negotiations since it did not get approval from the league. The next step for Barca will be to look for ways to register Aguero, Depay, and Garcia.