Barcelona 'bet the house' on their future - will it work?
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It doesn’t seem that long ago, that Pep’s Barcelona were the epitome of a well-run football club.
Moving on from Messi & co was always going to be difficult, but a series of failings on and off the pitch, led to a fall from grace. Only last month however, President Joan Laporta proclaimed the crisis he ‘inherited’ was over.
But, as the reigning La Liga Champions’, net debt climbs to almost £1.2bn - is everything quite as it seems at Barca?
In the second part of our series ‘Crisis Clubs’, examining the financial states of five European football clubs, Ayo Akinwolere, Matt Slater & Dermot Corrigan dig into the numbers and plot a potential way out for Barcelona.
Produced by Adonis Pratsides and Mike Stavrou
Executive Producer: Adey Moorhead
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:07.8 | It doesn't seem that long ago that Peps Barcelona were the epitome of a well-run football club. |
| 0:14.4 | Still with Messi, great shape by Grufon, but Suarez follows up. Advantage again to Barsat. |
| 0:23.6 | Moving on from Messi and Co. was always going to be difficult. But a series of failings on and off the pitch led to a fall from grace. |
| 0:32.6 | Only last month, however, President John Laporte proclaimed the crisis he inherited was over. |
| 0:40.7 | But as the reigning La Liga Champions' net debt climbs to almost £1.2 billion, is everything quite as it seems at Barso? |
| 0:49.7 | Amayo Aki Molere, welcome to the Athletic Football podcast. |
| 1:08.3 | Thank you. welcome to the athletic football podcast okay so it's barcelain okay so it's barcelona's turn today for the second part of the athleticsics Crisis Club series, examining the financial state of five European football clubs. |
| 1:14.8 | I'm joined once again by the Athletics Senior Football News reporter Matt Slater and also our Spanish football writer, Dermot Corrigan, as well. |
| 1:23.0 | All right, Matt, let's start with you on this one. |
| 1:24.6 | We talked about Everton yesterday, and obviously it was a really good place to start based on the current news following their 10-point deduction. |
| 1:31.6 | But how have the reigning La Liga champions, the European juggernaught, Barcelona, got themselves |
| 1:39.1 | onto our list? Yeah, shouldn't happen to Barcyon, it should it? It wasn't that long ago they were top of Deloitte's money list in terms of revenue. |
| 1:47.5 | I mean, they're still up there. |
| 1:49.2 | How, uh, have Barsani got into this mess? |
| 1:51.9 | Well, it's a few ways, but with a very sort of specific thing that kind of pushed them off the edge. |
| 1:58.2 | So they, it's a classic's tale of bad recruitment, sort of player |
| 2:03.1 | power, spiraling wages, and then the pandemic. Okay, now the pandemic is an excuse that every |
| 2:09.0 | club in the football industry can use. I think it is fair to say that it hit Barcelona particularly |
| 2:15.1 | hard. One day, they've got a massive stadium. They've got the biggest |
| 2:18.9 | match day revenue in Spain by a long way. And they also have this sort of fantastic side hustle |
| 2:24.7 | being the museum and the stadium tours, which brings footfall to that stadium, to that place |
... |
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