For Barcelona, Wednesday’s visit to Bayern Munich is more at stake than sporting interests. The Catalans have budgeted for reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League, but threaten to continue in the Europa League if they lose points. Barcelona will have to avoid a hole in the budget of 20.2 million euros on Wednesday.
Before the season, it was estimated that Barca would at least join the last eight players of the Champions League, but the current state of affairs is far from rosy for the club. Benfica can take over second place in Group E from Barcelona by beating Dynamo Kiev at home. The only way for the Spaniards to avoid that is to win themselves on a visit to Bayern. Barca will hope for support from Kiev, because if Benfica fail to win, the Catalans will move on to the Champions League anyway.
A premium of 9.6 million euros is ready for reaching the eighth finals, while clubs will add another 10.6 million euros for reaching the quarter-finals. Should Barça fly out, therefore, 20.6 million euros in budgeted income will be missed. The club could partly compensate for that in the Europa League, but the prize money is a lot lower in the second UEFA tournament.
Should Barcelona succeed in winning the Europa League, the club will collect a total of 14.9 million euros in prize money after the winter break. In that case, the budget loss is therefore limited to 5.3 million euros. In order to make the Europa League reasonably lucrative, the final must in any case be reached, because when eliminated in the semi-finals, the prize money is only 6.3 million euros in total. An advantage of the Europa League tournament could be that the winner qualifies directly for next season’s Champions League, which is not a matter of course for Barça via their own competition.
For Barcelona it is very important to avoid a hole in the budget. As is known, the club is already struggling with major financial problems and cannot use an extra setback, now that both winter and summer reinforcements are being sought. marca reports that Barca will be targeting rental players anyway in January, while the summer transfer budget would take another dent in the event of an early elimination from the Champions League.