It’s not yet the rout at Barça, but we’re getting closer to it all the same slowly. Totally blocked after playing Monopoly during this summer transfer window, the Blaugranas find themselves unable to register their recruits with La Liga, four days before the resumption of the championship against Rayo Vallecano.
The club has tried to multiply the leads to bring in cash (pressure on De Jong to leave, sale of part of Barça Studios’ shares, salary agreement with Gerard Piqué, sponsorship of Camp Nou via Spotify) but this does not not enough to respect the salary cap imposed by the Spanish League.
Christensen and Kessié may decide to pack up
On Wednesday, ESPN told us outright that two summer recruits could finally leave the club for free, without having played any official match with the Catalans, if their contract was not registered by the resumption of the championship. They are Andreas Christensen and Franck Kessié, both of whom arrived freely from Chelsea and AC Milan, and who have a release clause in their new contract signed with Barça.
If there is no indication that they will come to such an extreme solution, as ESPN journalists point out, the presence of this clause alone proves that the players’ agents were aware of the dangerous game Barça is playing this summer, which recruits with a vengeance even though the club is strangled financially.