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Barcelona and Goldman Sachs: What exactly is going on? [thread]
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It's no secret that Barcelona's finances are in disarray. After ending the 2019/20 season with losses, the new Goldman Sachs deal, if the reports are true, is nothing less than self-sabotage.
Maria Ciria, who was responsible for finances during Joan Laporta's run for presidency, has revealed the financial maneuvering Barcelona are exploiting in a recent interview.
What exactly is she saying? Well, Barcelona are currently in the middle of a project expanding across multiple decades, called the Espai Barça project. It involves many developments such as the new stadium. To fund this, Barcelona have had to take loans.
Due to these loans along with the recent one, the Catalans are already in a debt of around €800m. The current presidency leaving would mean that the loan then becomes the next president's problem.
What Ciria claims is that the loan taken in the name of Espai Barça is actually being used to pay off the wages of the players. The club is inflating the costs of the project in order to divert the finances towards wages.
So Barcelona need to pay off a humungous loan while functioning as a top European club and continuing the development of Espai Barça. What if they aren't able to do this? It would mean that Goldman are now prioritised over the players, who are essentially employees of the club.
So the club might have to let players go for next to nothing to free up the wage bill, or force them out for profit. Another scenario is, Barcelona might have to split ownership. This would give Goldman, or a specific partner of theirs, a stake in the club-
-which would in turn mean that a purely financial institution will be involved in the running of the club. Another option would be that Barcelona would become a sports corporation. I am not sure what this would entail, but it might mean that the decisions in which-
-the socios were earlier involved would now be decisions of the board along with all other decisions.
For the time being, it looks like this loan is nothing less than self-sabotage. We need to wait for more information about this because from what we know so far, the situation looks incredibly bad.
