“I think so, I can’t say the opposite because I would lie otherwise and I am not that kind of person. If I was in another club seeing the situation Olmo and Pau are going through, I would probably think twice about coming here or to another club.”
It’s a pretty extraordinary situation when a senior player at one of the world’s biggest clubs can openly admit the state of things is so bad that he probably wouldn’t sign for them.
That was Raphinha, talking this week about the mess surrounding the registrations of Dani Olmo and Pau Victor at Barcelona, and it’s impossible to disagree with him. Because what sensible player would sign for them, in these circumstances?
GO DEEPER
Olmo affair has raised questions over Laporta’s quick fixes – are Barcelona running out of road?
Barcelona are currently attempting to convince various authorities to set aside the rules everyone else plays by and officially make Olmo part of their squad for the rest of the season. After signing the Spain playmaker from RB Leipzig for a fee in the region of €60million ($62m; £50m at current exchange rates) last summer, they were not initially allowed to register him with the league, due to the restraints placed upon them as a result of their various financial problems. They ultimately had to rely on a loophole, when defender Andreas Christensen was ruled out of the first half of the season with injury, to include Olmo in his place.
But only until the end of December. The loophole has closed, and rules state that they are not allowed to re-register Olmo and Victor for the remainder of the campaign. They have failed in appeals to the national federation and La Liga and are currently trying to appeal to the Spanish government.
Will they succeed? Reports in Spain suggest they have been granted a temporary reprieve and the two men will be allowed to play. But at the time of writing, that is uncertain.
The upshot of this is that Olmo, 26, is left in limbo. As things stand, he won’t be allowed to play for Barcelona again this season. As The Athletic reported last month, a clause in his contract allows him to leave for free if Barca are unable to register him. Or, in theory, he could go somewhere else on loan. But that isn’t what he signed up for.
Olmo playing for Barcelona last month (Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
It’s a mess, the sort of thing you think shouldn’t be able to happen with such an august institution. But really, the only surprise is that this situation — where a player is potentially left on the sidelines having signed for Barca on the promise that everything will be OK — has taken this long to happen.
They were only able to register Ilkay Gundogan in 2023 because they sold Ousmane Dembele to Paris Saint-Germain and made room on their balance sheet. In the same summer, they had to delay Inigo Martinez’s registration, and then a year later tried to persuade him to take a pay cut to give them more wiggle room for Olmo.
Jules Kounde missed the start of the 2022-23 season because they were unable to immediately register him and it took personal guarantees from board members to allow him to play, along with Joao Felix and Joao Cancelo.
That summer, they also signed Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha, who were only registered after a deal was agreed to sell stakes in various business arms of the club that, in theory, should have raised €200million. They were only able to register Ferran Torres in January 2022 after restructuring the contract of Samuel Umtiti.
GO DEEPER
‘We ask them to resign immediately’: How Barca’s Olmo saga has fuelled Laporta criticism
But their luck is running out. They are reaching the end of the road, their path blocked by a massive pile of cans they have previously kicked down it. They are pulling levers but nothing is happening. Selling future rights to hospitality seating at the unfinished Camp Nou — a classic Barca financial fugazi — did not solve their problems when it came to registering Olmo as they did not provide the authorities with the transaction documents in time before that December 31 deadline.
Should they be granted a temporary reprieve this time, it will be just that: temporary. Whether it’s Olmo, one of their other existing players or another star they somehow spend a huge amount of money on, sooner or later they won’t be so lucky.
It has been tempting to view the rolling shambles of Barcelona’s finances, from a distance, as an amusing sideshow. But now they are actively harming careers.
That’s careers plural, because while Olmo is understandably the headline player involved here, it’s important to mention the other piece of collateral damage in Barcelona’s ongoing war with the rules/balance sheets/common sense. Victor, the striker signed in the summer to be backup to Lewandowski, is the other player potentially frozen out through no fault of his own.
They’re relying on goodwill and emotional connection to keep Olmo. Barca are his boyhood club, who he re-joined this summer after 10 years away from Catalonia. So the idea of leaving this month, after barely starting his career there, does not appeal. But what if they had signed, say, Athletic Club’s Nico Williams in the summer instead? Williams, 22, is one of the world’s most exciting attackers who is in demand and has no sentimental attachment to Barcelona. They couldn’t rely on any heartstring-tugging to get him to stick around in the face of such a shambles.
Barcelona do have a particular draw, meaning players are generally willing to join them whatever the circumstances. Arda Turan, for example, signed for them from Atletico Madrid in 2015 while the club was under a transfer ban, meaning he couldn’t play for the first half of that season. He knew this when he signed, but as he told The Athletic last year: “The best team in history wants you. If you love football, nobody would say no.”
They have other attractions. The Catalan lifestyle is a draw. They offer big wages. The chance to play with this young generation of brilliant players, such as Lamine Yamal, Pedri and Gavi, would also appeal. Maybe even enough to take a chance on not being allowed to actually play.
Their financial problems have been common knowledge for some time, too, so the likes of Gundogan, Lewandowski and Raphinha will have known about them before signing. (Indeed, Raphinha went on to say in that media appearance on Tuesday: “When I signed for Barca, I knew the situation the club was going through. I saw a chance to play for this shirt and I waited until the very last moment. I don’t regret at all my decision.”)
In those cases, the club have been able to persuade the player that all will be well and they will be registered without issue, which has been easy enough to back up because, in the end, all of them have.
Olmo, left, celebrating with Lewandowski earlier this season (Eric Verhoeven/Soccrates/Getty Images)
But all of those caveats are disappearing. It’s like driving on a winding mountain road with vertiginous drops over the side of it: if it looks dangerous but nobody has fallen off it, then people will be more willing to use that road. But as soon as there’s an accident, nobody will go anywhere near it.
It’s January. Transfer season. The time when big clubs are linked with big players, with varying degrees of plausibility.
Barcelona are, as ever, at the centre of the gossip columns. Just this week the rumour mill has credited them with an interest in Son Heung-min, Marcus Rashford, Luis Diaz, Viktor Gyokeres, Alexander Isak, Thomas Partey, Erling Haaland and a range of others.
Some of those links might be true; many of them will not. But there was a time when most of those players would have been delighted to even be mentioned in the same breath as Barcelona.
Not anymore. Even one of their own players says so. Olmo’s case will serve as a cautionary tale to any player they might otherwise have been able to sign. And if they lose out on other transfer targets because of this episode, they deserve absolutely no sympathy.
(Top photo: Gottschalk/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
