The Spanish Sports Council (CSD) ruled in favor of Barcelona’s appeal, permitting Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor to remain on the roster through the duration of the season. La Liga had made the initial ruling to unregister them due to the fact that the club had overlooked the deadline to control finances as of December 31st, but this appeal reverses their decision.
The decision follows La Liga’s recent assertion that Barcelona was still in breach of salary cap regulations. There have been moves to reveal Barcelona’s former auditors following the league’s concerns over a €100 million shortfall in the club’s accounts.
Following a three-month examination, the CSD determined that the collective commission established by La Liga and the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) had no power to bar Olmo and Víctor from being registered. The decision invalidates the RFEF-La Liga accord and guarantees the two players remain registered up to 30 June. Barcelona will, however, have to address its financial fair play (FFP) problems to register them for next season.
On Wednesday, La Liga added to the uncertainty over Barcelona’s finances, asserting that the club had failed to achieve what is referred to as the “1:1 ratio,” whereby a club can spend one euro for each euro generated. In January, Barcelona was thought to have achieved this figure through a €100m investment agreement over VIP boxes at the new Camp Nou. This revenue, however, is now missing from the club’s most recent profit and loss accounts.
In a desperate attempt to legitimize its financial situation in time for the deadline, Barcelona hired new auditors on 31 December. The Catalan firm Abauding was temporarily hired following the exit of Grant Thornton, as per Spanish news outlet Cadena Ser. Subsequently, Crowe Auditores replaced them and produced the final accounts presented to La Liga once the transfer window had closed. La Liga, however, alleges that these audited accounts omit the €100m investment.
La Liga released a statement indicating that Barcelona did not have the financial room to be able to meet the FFP requirements as of 31 December, 3 January, and today. The league has now called for a full CSD probe and will report the auditors who certified the €100m revenue to the Institute of Accounting and Accounts Auditing (ICAC).
Barcelona president Joan Laporta waved the allegations aside as a calculated bid to destabilize the club. “This is not a coincidence,” Laporta said. “It is another attempt to disrupt us.”
On December 31, La Liga originally reported that Barcelona had not passed financial control requirements, meaning the club remained over its €426m salary limit. Consequently, the temporary registrations of Olmo and Víctor, which had been approved in August, had expired, and both players were dropped from the team.
Barcelona retaliated by saying that a last-minute €100m sale of VIP boxes in the refurbished Camp Nou had been agreed with Middle Eastern investors. Club vice-president Elena Fort conceded that she was unaware of the names of the two parties to the deal. Subsequently, Laporta revealed they were one Qatari firm and another Saudi Arabian one, but he did not name them.
While La Liga originally accepted the revenue on 3 January through an auditor’s certificate, provisionally increasing Barcelona’s wage budget to €463m, the required paperwork was not filed on time to re-register Olmo and Víctor. According to RFEF rules, a player cannot be registered twice within the same campaign, so Barcelona cannot put them back on the list of squad players.
The Commission overseeing La Liga and RFEF relations then formally ruled that the two players could not be registered, a decision Barcelona unsuccessfully contested through two legal challenges. However, the club eventually persuaded the CSD to grant a temporary injunction, arguing that blocking the players’ participation would cause irreparable harm to both them and Spanish football as a whole.
Barcelona had filed a 60-page defense, claiming that the Commission had no power to issue such a ruling. On Thursday, the CSD supported Barcelona’s argument, dismissing La Liga and RFEF’s contention that the Commission merely conveyed decisions of the respective governing bodies.
Though part of the clubs has expressed a worry that the decision may overtop the financing governance structure, CSD reminded all that it never questioned La Liga’s cap-based pay scheme system. Pointedly, in rendering the verdict, the decision dismissed the contested €100 million signing as an altogether separate albeit related matter.
Barcelona has not yet reacted to the most recent statement from La Liga, and therefore it is not yet known how the budgetary drama will unfold.
