The Spaniards have a great talent for ruining everything in a dispute, says the former Argentine world champion Jorge Valdano, and who wanted to contradict the great interpreter of current football news on this issue? Now it was all the more difficult: For days, an atmosphere has been building up in professional football in his adopted country of Spain that has been in the newspapers guerracivilista is called, similar to civil war. Because it’s about a lot of money, about the future of the Spanish league – and the question of who holds sovereignty over football in their hands.
On the eve of the start of the new season – including Real Madrid traveling with its David Alaba access to Deportivo Alavés – 38 of 42 clubs in the first and second division voted for a deal that the league association LFP had negotiated with the Luxembourg-based venture capital company CVC . It ensures the clubs an inflow of at least 2.1 billion euros. The three clubs that were never relegated from the first division that was founded in 1929 – Athletic Bilbao, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid – voted against the agreement, as did Real Oviedo. Today’s naysayers can still join the deal for the next three years. Thus, the sum could rise to the originally negotiated 2.7 billion euros. In return, CVC will initially have nine percent stake in any league profits over the next 50 years; the amount would rise to eleven percent. Real Madrid, however, has passed a presidium resolution to take legal action against the league association LFP, the CVC and their bosses. Civil and criminal law. For alleged misappropriation of rights belonging to the club.
The deal was negotiated by the LFP behind Real’s back. All other clubs were informed about the upcoming deal in varying degrees of detail. The billion-dollar indebted FC Barcelona was briefed particularly intensively by LFP boss Javier Tebas – and is said to have initially signaled approval. In light of the impending cash boom, Barcelona activated efforts to renew captain Lionel Messi’s contract early last week. But then, to everyone’s amazement, Barcelona backed down. The club waived CVC’s money – allegedly up to 275 million euros – and thus Messi. FC Barcelona lost its most important sporting and economic asset to Paris Saint-Germain, as did the league, which in recent years has heard Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos Adiós say.
“It hurts that Messi is leaving. But the foreign rights have already been sold out for four years and there is no clause stating that if they leave, contracts will change or less money will flow,” said LFP President Tebas. How deep the sting is, revealed a point against the club management of the Catalans: Barca is in the hands of “people who make very intelligent decisions, you noticed that recently”.
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Tebas’ ridicule was a perfect fit for the current situation. Even in the days before Thursday’s vote at the LFP, there had been a bitter battle of the communiqués about the interpretation of the CVC deal. The LFP stated that the commercial activities, with the exception of the broadcast rights, will be outsourced to a new company in which CVC has a stake. The clubs in the league, most of which are short of cash, receive interest-free loans from the CVC funds, which they can use immediately to operate. The condition, however, is that 70 percent are invested in infrastructural measures. 15 percent each can be invested in the repayment of debts and in the management.
In the case of Barcelona that would have been around 40 million of the total of 275 million euros. With those 40 million, Barcelona could have registered Messi as a licensed player while maintaining the salary cap – said Tebas. The waiver, however, meant that FC Barcelona, which was in debt with just under 1.2 billion euros, could not afford the new Messi contract. How precarious the situation is can only be seen from the fact that it was open on Friday whether Barcelona could register their access Memphis Depay (Olympique Lyon) for the game on Sunday. Two further signings, Eric García and Sergio Agüero (both from Manchester City) have not yet been registered as licensed players. In order to meet the salary limit, players must disappear from the payroll.
Why was there any resistance from major clubs to the deal with CVC? Because of the Super League plans of Barcelona and Real Madrid, Tebas claims: “They don’t want a more powerful Spanish league”, that would be too strong competition on the TV and advertising market for the hoped-for Super League, which Tebas thinks is a crazy idea. The clubs disagree with this interpretation. You accuse the league of having sold the rights of the Spanish league below value. The newspaper El País At the beginning of the week published a study commissioned by Real Madrid, according to which CVC did not get the investment back in only one scenario. The scenario is called: End of the world. Should the league’s profits grow by ten percent annually until 2071 (“optimistic scenario”), CVC would get its investments back almost a hundredfold, to 212 billion euros. A conservative scenario (three percent growth) would therefore lead to a distribution of 21 billion euros in profit for CVC.
One thing is clear: the current situation for many clubs is dramatic, and the pandemic has increased the losses from mismanagement and vabanque games. This also explains the clear majority in favor of the deal with CVC. Actually, only Athletic Bilbao is in the good position of not having any debts; Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, on the other hand, are indebted to the ruff of the neck due to sins of the past and large real estate projects – and are unable to make large transfers. Hope said the Spaniards, of all people, Lionel Messi, in an interview with El País. “It won’t be easy for Real Madrid and Barcelona, but in a few years they will adapt. There will be big stars again in Spanish football.”