Life after Messi: FC Barcelona's financial mess
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How did one of the world's biggest sporting brands end up in such a financial mess? FC Barcelona's collapse, from European Champions League winning juggernaut, to unable to register its players under salary cap rules took less than a decade. So how did it take so little time for one of football's giants to fall so hard? We explore that with club members and supporters, as well as the Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper, the author of a new book about Barcelona; Barca, the Inside story of the world's greatest football club.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, FC Barcelona. It is one of the most |
| 0:08.5 | legendary names in club football, but it's facing one of the biggest debt piles in history. |
| 0:14.5 | Barcelona is in freefall financially. I mean, it must be the biggest financial crisis of any of the big soccer clubs, |
| 0:22.5 | even though they've all suffered in the pandemic. |
| 0:24.6 | Half a billion dollars worth of debt, to be precise, could it disappear altogether? |
| 0:30.0 | It's, in my opinion, unthinkable. |
| 0:32.5 | Barcelona without the FC Barcelona. |
| 0:34.7 | I think it's one of the best brands of the city and the country abroad, |
| 0:38.9 | and everybody knows that. |
| 0:40.1 | The fate of Barsa and what it says about modern football management, business daily from the BBC. |
| 0:49.9 | Early in August, a crowd has gathered outside Barcelona's Camp Now Stadium |
| 1:00.1 | to welcome and say goodbye to the man they call the Messiah. |
| 1:06.2 | Lionel Messi is emerging in front of the cameras, |
| 1:09.3 | the sixth-time winner of FIFA's Ballondeur, |
| 1:12.2 | for some the greatest player of all time, is struggling to hold back the tears. |
| 1:18.3 | He's saying goodbye to the club he'd served for 17 years since his early teams. |
| 1:24.6 | I have been thinking about what I was going to say. |
| 1:30.3 | The truth is nothing came out. |
| 1:33.3 | I was blocked. I still am now. |
| 1:36.3 | I've built my whole life here. |
| 1:46.6 | Today I have to say goodbye. |
| 1:48.6 | After 21 years, I'm leaving with my wife. |
... |
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