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Barcelona’s desperate attempts to cut £ 170 million from its budget have been thwarted after the board failed to agree to pay cuts with players.
The LaLiga team is seeking to cut first-team salaries by 30 percent to avoid bankruptcy fears, but has not made progress with Lionel Messi and company despite “several days of intense encounters,” they revealed on Wednesday.
A statement read: “Today, November 11, after several days of intense meetings, and the negotiation was exhausted, the parties have ended the consultation period, without reaching an agreement.”
Barcelona has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic and its finances have taken a great hit.
Players’ salaries consumed around 61 per cent of the club’s £ 940 million revenue before the Covid-19 crisis, with Captain Messi currently earning the most at the club, pocketing around £ 500,000 per week (£ 26 million per year).
The statement detailed that although current negotiations have been “exhausted”, both parties agreed to an extension of the deadline until November 23.
“Given that the negotiating process has demonstrated the sincere and firm will of the parties to understand, including the formula for the total recovery of wages that is postponed, and many of the difficulties that seemed days ago have been overcome,” the statement continues. .
“The parties have agreed to grant each other until November 23, to reflect and decide whether the proposals that have been on the table can still be accepted.”
Of the current Barcelona squad, only four players have accepted the revised conditions so far: Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Frenkie de Jong, Clement Lenglet and Gerard Pique.
Antoine Griezmann is the next highest earning behind Messi with a salary of £ 294,000 per week (£ 15.3 million per year), while Philippe Coutinho is the next highest to agree to a pay cut, at £ 180,000 per week ( £ 9.4 million per year). .
The president of the Union of Players of Spain (AFE), David Aganzo, traveled to Barcelona to meet with the first team and the interim president Carles Tusquets to discuss the situation.
The playing team is said to be sensitive to the club’s cash flow problem and there is confidence that a deal will be reached even with the process “exhausted” at this stage.
Barça’s income of £ 940 million has been reduced to £ 746 million amid the pandemic, and salaries will become more than 80 per cent of total income if no changes are made.
The club sold Luis Suárez, Ivan Rakitic and Arturo Vidal in the summer in an attempt to trade some of the high-earning veterans in the locker room.
If Barcelona’s playing team does not accept the cuts, the board would be forced to unilaterally reduce its revenue.
But unilateral cuts present their own problems.
They would cause an unpleasant reaction and the AFE has already indicated that if that happened, players would be released from their contracts.
In part of its statement released last month, the AFE wrote: ‘The club cannot fail to be aware that this process, if carried out as planned, will pose a more than certain challenge to the measures that are finally adopted. , with a high risk of nullity, and the automatic right to indemnified termination of the work contract of the affected workers, by virtue of the application of article 41 ET itself.
“We believe that the club must be frank with its partners and assume before them that these measures will mean a very significant loss of FC Barcelona’s assets.”
Finances have worried the Catalan giants for most of the year and it remains a real concern that they are still not controlling their operating costs.
Earlier in the year, Barcelona’s senior players agreed to a series of pay cuts in line with the club’s fight against the crushing effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Players received a 70 percent pay cut in March to ensure non-gaming staff received their full pay in the pandemic that shut down the sport.
Ronald Koeman’s team is now eighth in LaLiga, nine points behind Real Sociedad, which leads the table. They have two games in hand on the San Sebastian side.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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