Why are super clubs falling? And the tale of Barcelona
Hello and welcome to Chelsea News with me your host Jack. In todays episode we will be talking about the falling of global super clubs. This is part of a new series about some of Chelsea’s rivals and comparing them to Chelsea.
Many European super clubs are falling and dipping massively under the weight of their financial woes. We’ve seen it quite regularly in AC Milan previously, whom it took roughly 8 years to return to anywhere near their past glory, and now Barcelona.
How it starts is that a well run club begins to win. Once that club begins to win, they try to attract newer players, on a higher salary with the simple assumption that because they are winning, they can pay it off. This seems to work for a certain amount of time before the club experiences a dip from its usual form and cant earn the same amount of money as it once could. That is where the trouble begins. The club then has to take out massive loans to cover the players wages and to try to fund more transfers to get them back to where they once were.
Sometimes, in the case of Barcelona, the thing was, they were still winning games and playing good football, but the clubs finances were an absolute mess. For example, after tha 200 million euro sale of Neymar to Paris, the club recklessly spent 280 million euros on two players that the club simply do not need, in Dembele and Coutinho. The duo were simply underscouted, and should Barca have looked at the two more, they would’ve realised that Coutinho didn’t necessarily play in the Neymar position and was more suited to the position that Messi played in the team. And with Dembele, he was simply too young for such a big fee as there was no tellings what his injury record or future performances were. But Barcelona persisted, spending more and more on players that would fail until thy racked up a 1 billion euro debt at the start of covid 19.
Coronavirus was a big blow for the Catalan club, with no fans in stadiums being a massive hit for all clubs across the planet. And so Barcelona entered a state of financial ruin. They were 1 billion euros in debt and seemingly no way out. Due to the La liga salary cap, they weren’t even permitted to pay their talisman in Lionel Messi, who simply had to find somewhere else to play in PSG.
Now, seemingly things are beginning to pick up a bit, at Barcelona, with a 500 million euro loan was given to them, which has been used to build part of the camp nou and buy Manchester City youngster Ferran Torres. Hopefully their league form should also pick up under ex player and club legend Xavi. Currently the club are languishing in 8th place in La Liga and have dropped out of the Champions League. I guess we’ll see what will happen at Barca, but if Milan are anything to go by, Barcelona still have a long way to go.
Anyways thanks for listening, Ive been your host Jack at the Chelsea News podcast, if you’ve enjoyed feel free to check out some of the previous episodes. Goodbye!
