Samuel Umtiti deal that enabled Ferran Torres’s registration was an imperfect solution but at least a solution of sorts
This was no change of heart, no re-evaluation of his usefulness and it certainly doesn’t change the fact that they would like him to go sooner rather than later. They hadn’t concluded that, if he wasn’t going to go, maybe he could be useful after all. Well, not on the pitch, anyway: off it, it had turned out he was not just useful, he was necessary, a means to an end. Barcelona didn’t even wait two minutes between announcing his deal and explaining why they had done it, which wasn’t about him. Quote tweeting the renewal, they said: “Through this contract extension FC Barcelona will be able to increase its ‘financial fair play’ quota and thus register Ferran Torres.”
And there it was in a nutshell. In all probability there are promises made and details that escape us, agreements reached and not revealed which help explain why the terms were accepted. But the way Barcelona explained it, essentially Umtiti had done them a favour: he had agreed to a short-term 10% pay-cut and to spread the salary he was due to receive between now and 2023 across the next three years to 2026. An imaginative way to overcome an inherited problem which was constructed by Mateu Alemany, the director of football; one that may not resolve the underlying financial difficulties but does allow Barcelona to overcome an immediate obstacle.
Torres’s signing was facilitated by a loan from Goldman Sachs. That was one thing; registering him was another. For any registration to go through, clubs must work within “salary limits”, essentially La Liga’s version of financial fair play. An automated system, if you don’t comply it simply will not allow the player to be registered. Barcelona’s limit this season is €97.7m. Their actual salary mass is closer to €430m. Which means they can only spend by what’s known as the 4:1 rule: they must make and demonstrate a four-euro saving for every euro they invest. (Or a two-euro saving if they are able to offload a player who alone accounts for 5% of the limit.)
Alemany had already said that before anyone could arrive, players had to leave. Last week Barcelona’s president, Joan Laporta, declared: “We’re back!” – which was very like him. It was premature too, of course. Yet they are trying to get back and if the inheritance limits them, if more problems await, if significant gaps remain in the squad and players they don’t want remain too, there are some reasons to be cheerful. Not least an emerging young generation: Pedri and Ansu Fati are fit again and flew to Saudi Arabia. They have Gavi, Nico, Ronald Araújo, Eric García. Torres fits that mould too, a strategic signing that was also a statement.
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