Barcelona face bankruptcy if they cannot save £171m before November 5 according to multiple reports coming out of Spain including Catalan radio station RAC1.
It is being suggested the Catalan club need to agree a fresh round of pay cuts with its players to stave off bankruptcy. Some of the club’s players had already agreed pay cuts of as much as 70 percent a few months ago at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
Apparently the cuts made in the spring are not enough and the club’s finances continue to spiral out of control with losses of £88 million being announced in early October.
With their revenue down by £122.5m the clubs debt levels have reached £443m. Before the coronavirus pandemic the club was boasting annual revenues of one billion euros.
A new board led by Carles Tusquets is in charge until next year’s elections after the resignation of club president Josep Maria Bartomeu following a well publicised fall out with star player Lionel Messi who wanted to quit the club for Manchester City at the beginning of this season.
Tusquets was at pains to explain how the Covid-19 pandemic had destroyed Barcelona’s finances.
“Our main concern is the club’s finances. The pandemic has affected Barcelona particularly hard. The club depends on tourism and now, all of that income has been lost.
“The situation is not very comfortable, we have to take on the ideas of the previous board to find a way of addressing the problems we are facing.”