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Graham Hunter
Are Barcelona the only club in the world where you could explain to a neutral observer the level of chaotic, acrimonious threat from which they suffer and still predict that they’re favorites to win two or three domestic trophies this season?
Probably … yes.
So, notwithstanding the benefits of the Spanish champions signing Marcus Rashford, Joan García and Roony Bardghjiit’s worth lifting the Blaugrana carpet and examining the problems that are being determinedly swept underneath it.
Remember the Nico Williams fiasco?
Barcelona’s midsummer was marked by the Spain winger pulling out of a transfer, which the club thought was done and dusted, because his agent, not unreasonably, demanded a guarantee that the 24-year-old would be registered as a Barça player by a specific date.
Williams’ entourage had witnessed the mess president Joan Laporta’s board made of registering Dani Olmo last season so, when the Blaugrana were unable to meet their demands for security and peace of mind, the player renewed his contract with Athletic Club instead.
The key issue here, just as it was a year ago, is that Barcelona’s accountants are confidently claiming that they’ve reached a clean bill of health regarding LaLiga‘s ultra-demanding financial fair play (FFP) rules. LaLiga, until now, continue to take a different view.
To give you a visual image: Barça are walking tall with chest puffed out in public, but on blended-knee with hands clasped in prayer in private, and LaLiga’s bosses are scratching their chin in skepticism and doubt.
At the time of writing, with ten days until the season kicks off, none of Hansi Flick’s new players (or Wojciech Szczęsny or Gerard Martínwho’ve been given new contracts) are yet eligible to feature for the champions. The new additions have been signed (or taken on loan, in Rashford’s case) by Barcelona, but they don’t have the certification from LaLiga that they will be allowed to play.
If that confirmation isn’t earned by the time the transfer market closes, then those players would be ineligible until January. Unlikely, but a factual reality.
Next, the club has been announcing, and then embarrassingly postponing, their return to the Camp Nou for more a year now. (That’s no exaggeration. Eighteen months ago they were confidently predicting celebrating their 125th anniversary, which came and went last November, in their renewed and re-constructed home.)
Yet they’ll play their traditional and much-loved season-opening Gamper Tournament friendly at their 5,000-capacity Johan Cruyff Stadium rather than the Camp Nou as previously advertised.
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Once finished, the stadium is going to look, and feel, pretty extraordinary.
But the immediate plan was for the first team to compete there in front of a maximum capacity of 30,000 (lower than at their temporary home of Montjuic Stadium and a little less than a third of what the Camp Nou will hold once it’s completed). That’s hardly optimum for fans or players, and creates no hostile atmosphere for visiting teams.
The problem is that no one really knows for sure when the Camp Nou will be open for business.
The champions have persuaded LaLiga that their first three competitive matches (Mallorca, Levante, Ray Vallecano) should be played away from home to give Barça time to complete the various safety certificates and local council red tape that are currently unresolved, but those busy men and women in the Camp Nou corridors of power are juggling another, bigger, threat.
The UEFA Champions League begins in mid September, precisely when Barcelona are scheduled to play their first home league match, hosting Valencia. Good luck to them finishing all the final details on time while also meeting the criteria set by the city’s authorities, LaLiga and UEFA for a safe, modern, well-functioning stadium.
Again, I’d emphasize, the club is giving off confident noises about having their homework properly done. But, here’s the doomsday threat.
If, for any unforeseen reason, some of the criteria aren’t met and Barcelona can’t play their first Champions League league-phase home match at Camp Nou, then wherever else they choose, UEFA rules would mean the Blaugrana must play all their Champions League home matches at that same ground until January.
It’s only a potential setback, but, were it to materialize, embarrassment, recrimination and financial losses would ensue.
Asked by Sports World this week whether the Camp Nou wold be ready in time, Barcelona director Joan Soler answered: “What we’re clear about is that we will move back to Camp Nou. We shouldn’t set a date, because that becomes an added pressure. Building a stadium of this magnitude is colossal, but it had to be done.
“We have to guarantee the safety of the people who attend. Until there’s the appropriate certification, we won’t be back at Camp Nou. We’re going as fast as possible, because the club needs it, both from a sporting perspective, so that the team can play home games, and in terms of revenue.”
Have Barcelona quietly asked UEFA whether they could also be guaranteed to play their first couple of Champions League fixtures away from home, just as they’re doing domestically? They’ve already requested their first match be on the road.
Last, but not least, Barça and their 11-year veteran goalkeeper Marc-André Ter Stegen have pretty much fallen out of love with one another, and it’s all getting a bit passive aggressive.
Ter Stegen’s behavior toward the end of last season specifically angered Flick. They may share a nationality and be former allies, but Ter Stegen fell foul of Flick’s strict disciplinary code.
The keeper felt bold enough to show his displeasure at not playing sufficiently once he’d returned to fitness, and the coach dramatically changed his attitude to the 33-year-old first-team captain. What has followed is that García is now seen as the starting keeper, Szczęsny has had his contract renewed, Ter Stegen was told it was time to find a new club and there’s a massive debate about whether the Germany international will retain his captaincy.
Beyond Barcelona simply regarding García as the way forward, they want to move on from Ter Stegen, which would reduce their wage bill significantly and allow them to pacify LaLiga and register Rashford, García and the promising Bardghji.
But Ter Stegen, who has a highly lucrative contract with three more years remaining on it, is smart, stubborn and annoyed by how he’s been treated. Moreover, Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann has made it clear that in a FIFA World Cup season, Ter Stegen, if fit and featuring regularly for his club, will be the team‘s No. 1.
The stakes, for Barcelona and their five-time LaLiga-winning goalie, are super high.
Last month, Ter Stegen decided that he needed a touchup on a previous back operation. It was completed last week in France, and the argument now, between him and Laporta, is whether the recuperation will be three, four or five months.
A meeting is scheduled this week with the club needing to beg their badly treated player to accept that he’ll be out until January, rather than returning to training in November. The difference being whether Barcelona can then parlay Ter Stegen’s absence (while still paying him fully) into a financial dispensation from LaLiga so that they can rebalance the books and meet the FFP criteria to register their new players.
It’s a trick they used last year to register Olmo and Pau Victor for six months when Andreas Christensen was injured. If they can, it’s a victory for their tactics.
If they can’t, and Ter Stegen is not only injured, but they also can’t use his absence to alter their FFP status, then their treatment of him becomes Operation Own Goal.
“We’re making adequate progress on registering the new players, we’re convinced we’ll achieve it,” Laporta said during Barcelona’s tour of South Korea. “Using the absence of Ter Stegen to parlay with LaLiga [so] that we can register Joan García isn’t the only route, it’s just the most direct one.”
Not necessarily the most reassuring words, but perhaps it’s better for Laporta to speak with prudence than to be bullish.
Testing times for the champions but, I have to a admit, I’ll be arguing in this space in the coming days and weeks that they’re my best bet to win LaLiga again — even in the face of an interesting and renewed Real Madrid challenge.
Stay tuned.
