A: All we know for certain right now is that, according to Barcelona, the club are unable to register the contract due to the Spanish league’s rules on player registration, despite having reached an agreement for a new five-year deal with Messi.
The obvious question is this: If Messi was your priority , why would you commit around $50m in wages and the Emerson fee to sign those four other players if it was going to put you over the cap? That’s why plenty are speculating there’s something else afoot.
A: Some reports are suggesting that there was a last-minute hitch in the Messi deal, in terms of commissions to be paid and that he wasn’t entirely happy with some of the club’s transfer dealings this summer .
Perhaps more important than that is the deal Tebas struck with a private equity firm, CVC Capital Partners, which would see LaLiga receive a cash infusion of around $3.2 billion in return for 10% of future revenues and a 10% stake in a newly formed commercial company.
A: I’m sure they do, but they also say Tebas negotiated the agreement without their knowledge and that it hands the future of the clubs over to private investors.
Barcelona and Real Madrid generate the bulk of Liga revenue and a sizable chunk of that trickles down to other clubs.
It wouldn’t be easy, because the guys they’d like to transfer out of Barca are on high salaries and few clubs could afford them, but there are ways to do it.
Either within the context of CVC or the Super League or, more simply, in terms of cutting them some slack on the salary cap.
And, while there may have been interest from City 12 months ago, in the Burofax days, it’s not as if clubs were beating a path to his door in the past six months.
But fundamentally we have a situation where — at least according to Barca’s statement — Messi wants to stay and the club want to keep him, but the league won’t allow it, even though his departure would hurt everyone, league included.