“We saved the club” – Barcelona president Joan Laporta shares update on club’s financial situation 

Barcelona president Joan Laporta recently confirmed that the club are in a much better financial situation. He claimed that the wage bill has been significantly reduced, but they are working to reduce it even more.

Barcelona had to activate levers in the summer to sign players and get on par with La Liga's financial rules. They could not register Lionel Messi because of their situation, and thus, the Argentine skipper moved to Ligue 1 side Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).

Speaking on Thursday, February 9, Laporta claimed that the club was saved by the current board after the financial crisis made by the previous management.

"I want to talk about the economic situation, I mean we saved the club, we took decisions to reduce debt and now we are under control. The financial situation is improving every day," he said.

"We are in the process of achieving a record number of sponsorship contracts in the history of the club, as well as achieving records in stadium attendance, shirt sales, museum visits, and we are number one on social media," he continued. "We have reduced the wage bill by around €100M so far, in the summer we've calculated that we will reduce another €70M."

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Barcelona managed to register Gavi after convincing La Liga

La Liga rejected Barcelona's new contract with Gavi as they did not believe it was on par with their financial rules. Javier Tebas confirmed that they denied the registration as the club would be over €200 million off their wage bill limits if they had accepted the deal.

"The issue of not registering Gavi comes as a consequence of [the contact] taking effect next season," the La Liga president said. "For next year, [the registration] can be denied because Barça has a deficit of more than €200 million for next season. It doesn't seem appropriate."

Laporta confirmed that they are in talks with La Liga over the rules and are fighting.

"In other countries, fair play is more flexible," he said. "We're trying to convince La Liga to relax the rules. We managed to register a player, but La Liga changed the rule for us to not undergo this operation, it's a constant tug of war."

The Catalan side tried to sign Julian Araujo on deadline day but the move failed as they were late by 18 seconds.