Friday, August 6, 2021 at 12:25 PM• Dominic Mostert • Last update: 12:27

Barcelona expects a loss of 487 million over the past financial year, president Joan Laporta said at a specially scheduled press conference on Friday. The departure of Lionel Messi saves the club the necessary costs, but the financial figures remain jet black. The loss could be five times higher than after the 2019/20 season.

Laporta promised to investigate the true nature of the financial problems at the Camp Nou in the election race. At the end of March reported Esport3 that an audit has shown that about 350 million euros loss would be incurred over the current financial year and that Barcelona would only be able to write black figures with Laporta’s plans from the 2022/23 season. It has since become apparent that the situation is even more dire.

“We keep encountering new black holes. But we want to look ahead and respond to the conclusions of the audit,” said Laporta. “We initially hoped for a loss of around €200 million, but we now expect a loss of €487 million.” With Messi on the payroll, salaries were no less than 110 percent of income. After Messi’s departure, that share has fallen to 95 percent and Barcelona wants to gradually increase to 70 percent.

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It has been known for some time that Barcelona is in serious financial trouble. For example, due to the corona crisis, the club implemented a salary reduction for the second time in November last year, which saved approximately 190 million euros. At the presentation of the annual figures in January, it appeared that Barcelona had suffered a loss of 97 million euros over the 2019/20 season. The negative result for the current season is therefore probably even five times higher.

Messi was willing to pay two years’ salary over five seasons, but that sacrifice was not enough to secure a deal. “We shook hands with Messi. The new contract was settled. But the LaLiga rules didn’t allow it. I told Jorge Messi yesterday.” Laporta stressed that Messi has “tried everything and more”. “I don’t have a bad word to say about that.”