Things must be getting desperate for Joan Laporta at Barcelona, after it was revealed that the club are to accept a payment from Qatar in the region of €100m.
According to a tweet cited by Football Espana, the incoming amount would allow the club to register all of their new signings, and the contracts of existing senior players.
What’s interesting is that Laporta once criticised his predecessor, Josep Maria Bartomeu, for seeking financial backing from the Middle Eastern state.
“They [Bartomeu] prefer Qatar, they prefer to sell practically most of our assets to Qatar because it’s not only the sponsorship of our shirt, under that contract, there are more assets,” he said to FourFourTwo on the eve of the 2015 presidential elections, which Bartomeu won.
“If you go to the club you’ll will see that Qatar is everywhere.”
Since then of course there has been COVID, and Bartomeu’s incredible largesse which saw the club go over a billion euros in debt.
It will take some time and effort for the club to get back on anything like an even keel, and perhaps the need to get money from wherever it’s offered at this stage is seeing Laporta having to backtrack on recent statements.
From a supporter point of view, much of what goes on behind the scenes would appear to go right over their heads.
There’s little interest as long as the team on the pitch are winning, and after a league title was secured for the first time in a few years last season, things finally seem to be on the up again after a horrendous few years.
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