It’s pretty clear that all is not well behind the scenes at Barcelona in a financial sense, so the club needs to do all it can to save some money wherever they can.
The most obvious way of doing that would be to actually move players on, but they’ve overpaid some to such an extent that no other club can even come close to matching their demands,
The next step is trying to get players to take pay cuts – it’s in the best interests of the club to do that, but they’ve also agreed to offer any contracts so there’s a legitimate argument from the players that they shouldn’t be losing out because those behind the scenes are incompetent.
Gerard Pique is one player who cut his salary, potentially going behind the back of others to do so, and it appears he’s been used to pressure others into doing the same:
? [RAC1] | The agreement with Alba, Busquets and Sergi Roberto for a decrease in their wages will be closed in the coming days
They understand that Piqué has been used to pressure them and are surprised that the club is only asking for efforts from the captains pic.twitter.com/zFNTomg934
— BarçaTimes (@BarcaTimes) August 17, 2021
It’s hard to get too caught up in this as they’ll all be wealthy men who will still make more in a week than most of the world makes in a few years, but it does suggest the problems behind the scenes are as bad as everyone thinks.