For the first time since he returned to Barça, and despite the fact that he himself dedicated his electoral campaign to asking the partner to flee from “catastrophic messages”, Joan Laporta is in trouble. The matter has begun to complicate shortly after completing the famous one hundred days of government. In what is almost the perfect paradox, the silence on Messi’s renewal, theoretically agreed, has started to make a lot of noise. And at Barça they are no longer so calm.
Two aspects have stopped, for the moment, the agreement with the crack. The first, fundamental, is the salary cap imposed by LaLiga. Although none of the parties wants to give exact figures, what the body chaired by Javier Tebas has told the Barça club is that it is obliged to comply with the regulations, and that Barça or Messi are not above it, but neither no other club. So Laporta’s efforts now have to be aimed at asking Messi for one last effort and the highest salaries of the squad. With an added problem. The amount of exorbitant chips of players who contribute little or nothing in the sports field. From Umtiti to Coutinho through the injured Dembélé.
To the matter of the salary cap, some guarantees have been added that Messi has asked to avoid fiscal problems in the coming years, since Barça’s intention is to extend his contract for two years, until 2023, but then complete the pending payments when he returns from his american adventure, if it is that final decides to try in 2023 in the United States. Laporta, by the way, has missed in recent weeks a public message from the Argentine generating trust in the partner. The best demonstration that, once again, the one who manages the times is Messi. “We are progressing”, Laporta takes refuge these days, who for the first time drops a certain tension on his face and the fear of becoming the president who could not retain Messi.
There are side effects. At the same time that Messi’s continuity is being negotiated, Mateu Alemany tries to agree on cuts to the rest of the sacred cows. Piqué got on with Laporta, but the cases of Busquets, Jordi Alba and Sergi Roberto have not yet been resolved. Alemany’s intention is to sign new contracts with the players, according to the desperate economic situation. Alba has been put on the market, but does not want to leave. With Buquets, the aim is to sign a new contract extension to be able to defer payments until revenues are reactivated at a pre-pandemic level. Buquets reminds the club that he has not cost the club a euro. Others, on the other hand, cost a million, earn another, and have not yielded anything. He has won everything.