Hello and welcome to the Double Pivot, the world's most agreeable soccer analyst podcast. I am Michael Kaylee, we are back and there's been some news. I love it when there's news and it's funny news and it's funny news that's right in the core of one of our beats. Barcelona have just lost a court case that they brought in Spain related to La Liga financial fair play.
I still don't understand what case they actually brought, but nonetheless they have lost and we're going to break this down and get a sense of where Barcelona is, they've just fallen out of the table. The last time we talked about Barcelona they seem to be running away with La Liga so it's worth talking a bit about them on the football side as well. Yeah. I think it's time for a Barcelona pod.
I am joined by Mike Goodman. The music can run away as well. Let's please down. Let's grab his podcast.
Just patreon.com slash double pivot. Tons of fun stuff going on in the discord. Now in the, there's a wonderful conversation now in the podcast discussion channel of the discord talking about me showing out the saw discussion in the discord in the gaming channel. Absolutely perfect.
A wonderful recursive loop of discourse. Should we open a discord discussion channel in which people can discuss the discord? This is an open question that we can discuss on the discord. Listen to that.
What about the discord is we do have a discord channel of discord. Yeah, it's true. I actually don't check that very often recently. There was a robust discussion as to whether or not we should have put a channel in the discord that Barcelona, unlike usually when we discuss court cases, I don't have a firm grasp of the actual like court case surrounding Barcelona saying well, you could must allow them to register Daniel as far as I was able to tell the court case was Barcelona basically claiming we're Barcelona and we really want to and to be fair, this is not very different than the argument Barcelona have largely made against law legal rules and regulation financial rules and regulations, which are like, okay, yeah, you have these rules and they're important for these little clubs.
But what if Barcelona so like we should just get to do it anyway? And there's that gone. Wow. That's it.
The context for this is that over the summer Barcelona signed Danny Almo from Leipzig and they did not the way that the legal financial fair play works, unlike a Premier League PSR is instead of being backward looking, it's forward looking and they have to show instead of like the Premier League PSR works, they release their books to the league at the end of the season and the league says, oops, your books are no good, we're going to doc you points, we're going to do something to you and then it goes into an endless cycle of appeals and the way that Leipzig works is way more efficient. I can understand why the Premier League clubs didn't want to do it this way but it's way more efficient. You have to submit to the league that you're going to make a signing and the league says you have room under FFP or you do not. So when Barcelona signed Danny Almo, they did not have room for his signing.
They claimed they would be able to make room via Palancas. They did not but there was a there's an exception to these rules allowing teams to emergency register someone in response to an injury and so they emergency registered Almo because Andreas Christensen was injured because although obviously it's a replacement for for Andreas Christensen. Now that makes sense. That's how that rule is supposed to work.
That's definitely in the spirit of the rule. But nonetheless that allowed them to register Almo, but only for six months it's a six month exception. And so they come back in and they claim that they were going to get revenue from the Bar Sevision deal. They didn't.
They claimed that they were going to have guaranteed revenue from the sale of luxury boxes at the new stadium. They didn't. And so they didn't have that they didn't have room to register Almo. And so they sued La Liga and as best as I can tell from reading these articles they sued La Liga on the grounds that La Liga's rules were unfair to them in some unspecified way and the judge went through this history and said well you voted for these rules that apply in this way.
That's used the rules and the injury exception to register Almo. You accepted that you could only register Almo for six months and that you would need to find the money in time to register him again and you didn't. So it just seemed to be an incredibly trivial court case beyond the fact that you have to find against Barcelona who are a big deal. This is a bad sign with the judges effectively dunking on you and they're like, it's not good sign.
So this is where Barcelona and it appears that Almo is not going to be registered as we speak. And Almo has the right to become a free agent given that this has occurred. And I think we were talking about this before we started recording. I believe the contract is such that he's going to keep getting paid by Barcelona even while then signing another contract somewhere else potentially.
The report is that he has another five years remaining on his contract at about 10 million euros per season and that that money is owed to him regardless of whether he is able to be registered. I wanted clearer reporting on this. I'm still looking for it. I couldn't find it.
But what has been said in the Spanish press without using like a really specific language that would like really lock it down, but they have said that Barcelona would owe all of that money to him if he became a free agent. And it seemed to imply that that would apply even if he then went on to sign for Man City or whatever. And they would still owe him those 50 million that Almo basically got the contract written such that he would be owed that after money. We'll see if that happens.
That seems like thoroughly sending to me to be honest, like absolutely boggards. Right. And if it was anyone other than Barcelona, I would say, come on, they wouldn't really write a contract that badly. I guess I guess we should talk about like exactly where Barcelona are financially, which is like we've been talking now about Barcelona in crisis for a good three or four years.
And they're not in the same place. They were a number when the Palancas became a thing, actually the year before really the Palancas became a thing, Barcelona were in incredibly dire financial straits practically like cash flow wise, not just like not just like their books, but their actual operation was like what's significantly damaged and taking on what that is no longer the case. To that extent, the Palancas are vindicated, like there was real concern when they executed the pulling forward of all of this revenue to the current day that they were damaging their financial future in ways that would cause irreparable harm to them. And then like they started building the new stadium, the economy recovered, they got a big one from Goldman Sachs, like they got free money for bar sufficient, like a lot of free money from bar sufficient, which was either them scamming somebody or somebody being happy to give their money to Barcelona, but either way, Barcelona got a lot more money.
And they are practically in much healthier condition than they were four years ago. But from an accounting perspective, they are still one giant mess. From a La Liga rules perspective, they are still flush up against the cap with absolutely no room to spare, and they have done approximately fuck all to like rectify that situation. And if like really, if anything, they have actively made it worse at every single possible Joshua.
But one thing to point out here is that the Barca Vision deal was hundreds of millions of euros for total vaporware, and they sold it to Socio's, the NFT crypto-ish company that never had any real revenue. And so the problem, they were able to register this as revenue, but they did not, as far as we can tell, ever receive payments on it. And so this is the big problem for their books right now, which is their books are actually reasonably healthy. They are like running close enough to even to be a regular football club, plus they got a bunch of loans.
The reason that their losses have increased so much is that they have to register an exceptional loss on the Barca Vision deal because the revenue didn't come in. Right. And this is not practical cash flow, right? This was money that they put in their books that fulfilled obligations for how much they could or couldn't lose under La Liga regulations, but they now have to continually take off of their books because it is not actually coming in.
You know, like, I think they're like reasonable arguments here that like, regulation that hinges on this may not be the best formulated regulation because the actual amount of money coming into Barcelona is the same either way, you know what I mean? Like if they had not made that deal like three years ago or whatever, it would not be impacting their revenue now. But because they did, to get it under the regulation, now it is a negative on their books. It's not like, they've just not done that.
They would practically be at the same place from a cash flow perspective, but with healthier books. So regulation at this point in the lifecycle is kind of just regulating the previous shenanigans to come in line with the regulation and not like practically Barcelona's ability to exist as a going concern right now, but it's there and like you got to abide by it. Right. And the reason that it exists is that they lost like utterly incredible amounts of money.
Yes. When we were talking about, hey, Barcelona should really just like take a couple of years to get their house in order, play to kids, hire Javi, not be very good, who cares if he finished their or fourth or a couple of seasons, like it's worth it for the financial stability. Two things were happening. One, we thought it was necessary for their continued existence, not just for complying with the rules.
Two, we didn't actually know that they were going to have an amazing crop of kids coming through, which makes this all the more ridiculous when you really think about it. Yeah. And so they've cut their wages down significantly. Like their wage bill had, they did cut their wage bill by a hundred and forty million euros over a single season.
I mean, the last generation of old guys on this team, right? The Alba PK Sergio Busquets are the big three, but they were like the trailing edge of a generation of Jenny Alvis, Javier Machirano, like all of these guys making like unbelievable amounts of money because what the previous administration of Barcelona had done was backload all of these contracts, right? Had said, well, our plan for dealing with a legal regulation is we're going to sign all of you guys to mega deals, but they're all going to be in the out years so we can get under the legal salary cap rules now, and you know, the future is whoever the socios are like next problem. And it was a major fricking problem.
And so like, you know, first you were getting rid of Machirano, then you were letting Danny Alvis walk, then like you were like cramming PK's contract back down his throat and like he was like volunteering to take a like to retire immediately and not the rest of his salary for the good of the club. And like you're letting Busquets and Alba go like very, very quickly. And that really he's like, they probably will find messy like this at the core of the thing. Right.
And the messy is like the peak of this, right? Where they just can't bring back on his contract. And look, those contracts about in the book, the next rounds of signings that they did with all of the sort of like temporary space that they created were structured much more intelligently. The problem with Rado Lewandowski to the extent that we thought there was a problem with his signing was his age, not his contract.
They promoted the contract with two big years, and then it was like two option years at the back end. He's now in your free where like he's making less and the club could move him easily. Like that's what you want to be doing. The salary of the players right now is not particularly the issue.
The issue is they keep buying players that they don't need even to reasonable salaries. Right. And so you have a situation where this Barcelona team has an exceptionally good front line of Raphinea and Lewandowski and Leminiamal. And they have some youth attackers like Vermin Lopez, but their primary backup is Danny Olbo.
Which means, by the way, that they're Ferrantores is not a primary backup. Who they also spent a bunch of money on. That's your daughter's daughter's guess. That's your daughter's play.
That's your daughter's play. That's your daughter's play. That's your daughter's play. That's your daughter's play.
Basically, the one of Ferrantores or Danny Olbo. So, they spend all of this extra money they don't need to spend. It might lead to them having tens of millions of more spending for nothing. I would bet.
Like, one of the ways that Barcelona got out of this is that Messi was the only guy who was willing to go to war with Barcelona over money. Everyone else just like waited around. Like Olbo has until... Freaky Ddog pretty much fell apart.
Freaky Ddog pretty much went to war with Barcelona over money at one. Freaky is still at war with them and still waiting around and receiving his contract and not playing. He plays with... I mean, he's been hurt a lot.
But he is in the mix to play with himself, but not nearly justified for the amount of amount of money. Exactly. And he has clearly refused transfers, which would be predicated on him, taking a much smaller salary at the new club. And so like, most of this is still just sort of funny.
What is wrong for Barcelona remains the same thing, which is that there was one real lever, which was the sixth street deal. All the other levers were vaporware. We talked about this in our podcast with Johnson Jioh, he sort of like laid this out very clearly, that most of what they sold off was in fact worthless. And some of that they have not actually received a money for because it was worthless.
But what sixth street bought was a large percentage, it was 25%. See the 20 or 25 of future TV revenue over the next two decades. And that is like very, that is the realest revenue that Barcelona could possibly have. And they will now not be receiving it because that 25% has already been purchased and will go to sixth street.
And like, there is a question for Barcelona over the medium and long term of what the costs will be for them, of not of receiving 25% or 20% or whatever, less TV revenue. And that that will make the team somewhat worse over the longer term. But those are not questions anymore of survival. And likewise, failing to register Danny Olmoh, if this still fails, and then even if it does cost them an extra 40, 50 million, which would be dumb, their books will still more or less work.
And they will just have some trouble registering a guy here there. I mean, one thing that's really going on here is like having a golden generation sells a lot of financial ills. It's wild. You just get to play so many minutes at so many positions with guys who are good.
And to the extent that they're not good enough, you have so much more wiggle room with guys who are home grown, not good enough players who you still think might become good enough in the next couple of years. Like, there is just so much more space when that is the case. Now, eventually, all those guys get only one big contracts. And eventually, you either have to make tough decisions about who gets the big contracts or become Barcelona.
Like, that is the real thing here. But we're so far at the beginning edge of the cycle that everything like, if there were to be such a thing as medium term planning at Barcelona, what that medium term planning would suggest is, how do we get ourselves in exactly the right shape that we can maximize the Yamal Kurbasi window? And because those guys are so young, it is a 10 year fricking window, like at minimal, and your entire thing should be, how can we get the most out of this team during that window? And like, not signing Danny Olmoh when you don't need him is a really good start.
Recognizing, we're probably going to need a real big tax writer to follow in with us, his footsteps, whatever with us, he's gone. Maybe that's me to a rocket who's killing it on loan right now. And like, you've been able to send out on loan to do what you want him to do. But like, maybe not.
And we're going to need a bit. And you should just be creating space to do those things at a fairly like, not difficult piece. Just like, you know, don't sign extraneous players to be your string attacker. And like, you're going to be okay, especially when you have like kids, you can fill into that role.
And instead, like, maximize like an aggressive like two way eight, whoever that may be, there's just a lot of space. And even now, like, I think we're sort of both in agreement that they're pretty far away from being in trouble, any variety, even as they are, like, in real counting troubles, still, they're like in a counting jail. Like, yeah, I kind of think they are going to be out of accounting jail in a year. Is my read of it that like, it was it was it was still it was the exceptional items that they did book this season.
So it's gone. And the problem will be then that instead of them being like in total accounting jail, there's no possible way to register Danny Olmo, the problem will be they would need to register some very large deals to get a Lewandowski replacement in if Lewandowski at 37 can't hat that they would they also need to worry that, like, one of the reasons that this season is working so well, is that Rafina is giving them superstar production week in a week out. And he has been at minimum regularly injured over the course of his career. I guess what I'd say about them getting out of jail is that they haven't ever shown any capacity to not spend up to the line.
Yeah. And sometimes that spending up to the line gets you surprisingly good results, like in Lewandowski, sometimes it gets you screwed like Danny Olmo, when you're missing out the line. And sometimes, like, you get like weird benefits like Rafina who like takes less money to come play for you because he always wants to play for Barcelona, right? Same with like Goonday, right?
Like, you get to cram those guys in sometimes. But it really does prevent you from maximizing the bang for your buck. Exactly. The thing I would say that the way I would clarify this is that they are not currently spending up to the line.
They are miles over the line. And so there was no plausible way to register Olmo unless they could come up with another palanca and they didn't. After this, they should rather be at the line. It should be, but it sure seems like they're just going to spend until they're over the line again and forcing what we go, you know, like, they're going to.
Exactly. If you're at the line, you cannot maximize your deals. You have to, you have to work first from the accounting line and second, figure out what the best deals are for you. What I'm saying is that right now, they're not at the accounting line.
Right now, they're at the palanca line. Right. It'll be, I mean, I just like, so like, what I think is that like, okay, next year they're going to do it, get, they're going to spend until they get to the palanca line. Yeah.
They just have no capacity to like, by medium term plan, I mean more than one window. Shareholder democracy is the worst form of all governance. It's not great. So on top of this, and really, I would say, basically unrelated to this, Barcelona are no longer in first place.
And while you get there, they're in third now. Yeah. And I, like, I think they've gotten football for a few weeks and are basically fine. I watched the Atlético Madrid match.
They created tons and tons of chances and didn't score them. Yeah. And they scored one nothing chance and then did put together a very nice breakaway against a Barcelona team that was pushing very, very hard to win it. But like, bars, they only got that breakaway because Barcelona were like dominating in the final third and just like over dead themselves a little bit late in the match.
There is nothing about Barcelona's current cold streak that makes me move them out of like the top five to a chance. And this is significantly ahead of where they have been until about, I don't know, two thirds of the way through last year when really like, you know, you mean them all really comes on and, and Raphini starts staying healthy while still getting production out of the list. And it's like, I think there's another gear here for them that they can still hit with basically current talent. They have a number of pretty good, but off hurt, each players, your petries, gavis, et cetera.
And if a couple of them take a step forward and stay healthy, all of a sudden, this team gets even better. But I think they're good. And I'm not like, there's nothing about this particular slide that concerns me or makes me think that they're less good than I thought they were earlier in the season. But I do still think they can get even better.
Yeah. So the main story of this slide, they've got five matches, their last five matches were the break. They dropped points in four and they lost three. And those three losses, they dominated the XG and just couldn't finish.
Yeah. The one that matched there that is worth pulling out and sort of became like, the reality's draw became the sort of organizing, became the locus, the axis around which the interpretation of all those other matches came, because that was a really peculiar match where they were busted open defensively. They were actually somewhat fortunate to pull off and draw. And then the reality's players after the match came out and talked about how they attacked Barcelona.
And it became this like clear tactical talk about you could go to and watch the reality's matches, see them doing it. It's just that didn't happen in the other matches. But I do think it's interesting to talk about a little bit because it did happen. Yeah.
I mean, we've sort of talked about how insane Barcelona's full on Bundesliga tactics are in Spain. And it has been our opinion that they've been working quite well and still continue to work quite well. But like, there's a reason these tactics are they became dominant in Germany, but were never successful broadly across Europe at the top. And it is because you can't, you just, you cannot against other good teams control the game to the extent you need to, to be that exposed and that aggressive defensively.
And in La Liga, you can for the most part. I think you especially can't because the most of these other teams I've never seen anything like this before. I think it is an open question as to whether they can adjust. But like, other than Batiste, right, under Pellegrini, who's a very good coach, nobody has really been able to exploit this.
Even at Lenny, we're not able to exploit this. Lenny, we're like, kind of able to withstand it and fluke a goal the other way. But even then, not really. It wasn't created a ton.
And so like, I'm still firmly on the, I believe this will stop working in La Liga. Anyway, when I see it, I think it's a little bit of a different story with other top teams across Europe. So like, latter stages, the champions like, but that is a different sort of title of fish. Yeah.
And the thing that Real Batiste were able to do against the High Line was one sort of, and this is what they talked about, have a bunch of different runners from different looks making making those runs through the line. So it was harder for Barcelona to track them. But then what they were really taking advantage of more than anything else is that Barcelona's front line doesn't press that well. There is time and space, if you have defenders or one midfielder who can drop into the back line, to pick out that long pass.
And that is what they were able to do, whether it's a long pass or it's like a one pass forward to another pass forward. They were able to find that pass through the press. And I, and like, that is the thing that I kind of think that teams in the champions, they get a high level, will be able to look for, because there's a real weakness in this team that is a high pressing team that doesn't really have dominant physical high pressing talent in the front line. No, I mean, I think that that's all right.
And I also don't have, some of them, it feels like, plus defensively, but they don't have a linchpin guy who can absolutely control way more space than he has any right to do so, which is part of what would that make up for a somewhat lackluster for mind in defense, defensively pressing. Exactly. So you're running guys at that back line and you don't have midfielders who are like tracking every one of those or like kicking a guy before he makes it there. The back line itself has held up extremely well under the system.
Yes. Part of that is kabasi coming and being like in sync as a teenager. But Ed Kune giving you a lot of center back defending from Volback. Right.
But like in space, which is very impressive. Like, I mean, this, this back line has done a better job, significantly than I expected it to when this got implemented. Like, when they went down this road, if you would ask me about Kunde, I would have said, he will give you a lot of defensive production, but you're taking a big risk sticking it right back where he has to defend you to haul enough space against counterbacks. And what you've gotten is the reverse.
You've gotten a plus set of performances out of him because he is covered as a right back without problem, while also providing the sort of center backs worth of like stickiness and turnovers. Yeah, absolutely. And so like that defense has held up much better than you would expect. That is why, like the sort of, we didn't midfielders cleared off the line system has worked because the guys were in charge of clearing off the line, keep doing it.
Right. And like, they still look like the best team in La Liga to me. But the problem for them, I think going into the second half of the season is that everyone is just waiting around for Real Madrid to figure it out. Yeah.
And get healthy at the same time. Yeah. And so Real Madrid get healthy at figuring it out somewhat. And instead of them being like six points behind at mid season, when they figure it out, they'll be slightly ahead.
That's not a good situation. I know they might not figure it out. And on the other other part is on my absolutely improved. Like, there's still speaks for Barcelona to get better with Cartel.
Yeah. If they barely got anything from Gavi, who's the closest thing to a midfielder who can cover more ground than he has any right to, that they have in their squad. And if Gavi can like complete his recovery and play, that'll make a really big difference to sort of the salinity of the system. We haven't really talked about this.
But like, the Terstegen injury has left them pretty exposed that keeper. And like, yeah, there's room to solve that problem too, whether it's like, I mean, I guess he's a plane. So you probably like, aren't getting anything out of it. But like, he was the event is a keeper a year ago.
Yeah. I mean, if only they could register a new player, it would make a difference. Like this is where it hurts you. Well, I don't know the rules here.
Can they register, Shisney, on an emergency basis as a different emergency? There are things this team could do at pretty low cost that would help them this season without having a ton of cost in the out years. Like, they don't need to be dependent on in Yaki Peña to not do a very good job at goalkeeper. They can, they could just bring someone in on the cheap.
This is what teams do in these sorts of situations. But they literally cannot register unless they can find out loophole in the rules to register that player. Like, this is where those costs are fed. Right.
And this is why you don't typically want to max out. Being good oftentimes requires you to have the flexibility to do these things, more so than like feeding the beast to bring in a big name every summer. They're still good and fun to watch. And that's the other thing, like we should understand, there are a lot of fun to watch now, like way more fun to watch than rearmadrate at the moment.
Yeah, I mean, what they remind me of more than anything is a somewhat goofier version of perhaps buyer teams, where everything you're doing is set up to create one pass to a winger to do some really cool shit. Like those pet buyer teams have like three wares and just like dominate it. The difference is that perhaps teams did it with like Obsessive Control, as they always do. And this team does it like the opposite.
Yes. But those buyer teams also have like somewhat less control than his usual because everything ran through wingers who just definitely are going to lose the ball somewhat. Also because they were in Germany where everybody would sell out to remove control from a match in a way to know what else in the world does. I mean, what happens with Barcelona here too is that like Spanish teams don't sell out to like make a game up and down against you.
They don't want to do that. And so like you can play in a manner which would facilitate that and still have a bunch of possession control because other teams are not killing themselves to take away. Yeah. What it's like is if you had that that Byron level of wing talent playing that Barcelona playing that Bundesliga style that Bayern sort of halfway did.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And Raphina and Lemignon are incredible to watch and they do an excellent job. They've got it passers like Pedry and basically everyone can pass but especially Pedry that like just feed Raphina and Lemignon ball over and over and over again to do cool stuff. It's fantastic.
Pretty much. All right. And we'll be back with some more podcasts. We got some moose of stuff we want to do.
You know, and then we got a bunch of stuff on top of the next week or two. Absolutely promising a bunch of stuff that we are here. Gotta do because we do we podcast. Exactly.
Cheers y'all. Cheers.